Stars Start Falling
by berrywarbler
Summary: Blaine Winchester is far too much like his father. All he needs is an open road, good music, and the person he loves most sitting beside him.
1. Part I

_**me, and you  
God only knows it's not what we would choose to do**_

They spend the first five years of their lives traveling the country, hands usually interlocked in the backseat of the Impala as Dean sings along to whatever tape he's stuffed into the cassette player for the day. Blaine loves the Midwest the most, the sprawling fields that he can see into forever. Rachel falls asleep easiest when they pass through them, her head in Blaine's lap as he gazes out the window, thoughts deep even for a young child. There's no real possibility for a normal childhood for them, he had heard Dean tell Cas one night, not with a life like theirs. He doesn't know a normal outside of this, outside of listening to Rachel croon along to Carole King whenever Dean relents and lets her choose the music, outside of Cas telling Dean their next destination is still 342 miles away. Hotel rooms are his bedroom, the beds still large enough that he and his twin can curl up under the covers comfortably with more than enough room.

If there's something else that constitutes as a normal childhood, Blaine doesn't want it. He doesn't need it, only needs his dads and Rachel.

He's only five, after all, and he doesn't understand that this worldview could ruin his life in the end.

Dean's schooled them in having a good taste of music pretty early on. Rachel still prefers the girls' voices – Blaine thinks it makes her feel like she's not the only one in the universe, although to him she is – and when it's her turn to choose the tape, it's often a selection of Janis Joplin, Heart, and Fleetwood Mac. He doesn't mind it, the songs are good but they're not the same as what he prefers.

When it's his turn, he prefers the likes of Zeppelin, of Boston, and Queen. Dean beams at him the first time he lets him choose a tape and he immediately reaches for _Mothership, _but listening to _Kashmir _as they race through Iowa just gives him a peace he doesn't really understand. One that's way too over his head for a child, one he shouldn't expect to feel until he's at least in his teens, if not later.

One that he'll rarely find once he reaches those ages.

It's usually Castiel's job to keep them occupied when they start getting restless, pulling out coloring books for the two of them, dolls for Rachel and army men or toy cars for Blaine to play with in the back seat. Sometimes they get a little too crazy for the confined space, and Dean drives until he can find a place to stop, to let them run free for a little while. He's run across state parks, school playgrounds, corn fields and shores of lakes and rivers. Rachel's cried when she couldn't find him during intense games of hide and seek until he comes out of hiding, patting her back and telling her he wasn't going to leave her _forever_, what was she so afraid of?

They spend warm summer nights camped out in woods, on the edges of lakes, and Blaine likes those days the best. They can bask in the warm summer sun, Rachel forcing Dean to teach her how to swim, and sometimes their uncle Sam will come with them, spend a few days just getting away from whatever it is their parents do. He'll put Rachel on his shoulders and walk her around while she can giggle about how tall she is, Blaine pulling on Dean's jacket sleeve until he gives in and does the same, the two of them high fiving in their innocence while their dad and uncle run them around, screaming and laughing with them.

They're the best years of his life, even if he's too young to remember half of them, even if the memories will eventually fade into the back of his mind when the future comes. He's happy, things are simple, and he has no idea just how tragically fucked his life is going to become.

_**one voice is clear above the din**_

The first time he can remember her saying 'I love you', they're four and a half and curled under a blanket in the backseat of the Impala. Dean and Cas usually try and save Christmas as something special for them, wanting to instill all the childish hope and dreams they can in them even despite their less than average lifestyle.

But this year is different, with Dean needing the extra time to speed through the night, a promise that when they awake they will have presents, they just have to meet up with Santa to make his job easier, and with no reason not to trust their parents, they do. So Castiel sets them up in the large backseat, pillows and blankets galore to keep them as comfortable as possible, and Dean lets them listen to the radio for once, humming Christmas tunes under his breath. It's almost cheery, watching the snow fall around them while Dean drives as cautiously as he can while going nearly 70 down I-80 through the middle of the country.

Her head is tucked on his shoulder, her soft curls tickling his cheek and their hands-so tiny-wrapped tightly around one another like they might drown if they're not connected in some way. Dean never says anything about how often they touch and hold one another, it's natural to feel Rachel in some way, always close enough to wrap around each other and laugh and smile and comfort when one is upset.

Castiel's even humming along to _Jingle Bell Rock_, Dean smiling wide as he looks over at him, and Rachel's eyes are focused on the falling snow surrounding the car while Blaine turns to look at her.

"Pretty," she comments, in the small voice he'll recall years from now, her head turning to look at him with the gorgeous smile that she'll grow into as they age. "Isn't it pretty, Blaine?"

"Really pretty," he smiles, kissing his sisters forehead just to hear her giggle, the sound distracting Castiel enough to turn his head slightly to watch the two children as Rachel tucks her legs underneath her, her reindeer footie pajamas keeping her warm underneath their two blankets.

"I love the snow," she says after a few minutes, her eyes focused on the outside world again, "and I love Christmas," she grins, and he does too because Christmas means presents and seeing Uncle Sam and even Uncle Bobby sometimes, gingerbread cookies and, of course, pie for Dean. "Do you know what I love most of all?" she asks, her eyes bright even in the darkness of the car.

"What?" Blaine asks, because he's genuinely curious, because he never wants his sister to stop talking, her voice soothing even if it is high pitched at times, especially when she's upset.

"I love you," she beams, and a warmth spreads through his chest as he wraps his arm tighter around his twin, wanting nothing more than to be as close as possible to her as he can.

"I love you too, Rach."

_**you can't always get what you want  
but if you try sometime, you just might find  
you get what you need**_

The summer they turn six, Castiel tells them they're moving.

Technically, they've always been moving, never in one spot longer than a week or two. But this time they're getting a _house_, and the thought is almost terrifying to Blaine.

"But what do we do when we want to go on a road trip again?" he asks, Rachel frowning at her father as she takes the news in stride.

"You won't be, not during the school year at least," Cas tells them, Blaine furrowing his brow as he looks at his sister, begging her to ask the next question so he doesn't seem needy.

"Why do we have to go to school?" she finally asks, though her voice is lacking the sharp edge to it that Blaine wants it to have. If Rachel is on board with this even a little bit, that means they'd have to actually move into a house, make it a home, stop seeing all the places across the country.

"Because, you're not going to end up doing what your uncle and I do," Dean answers gruffly. "I'm not your grandfather, you deserve the chance to have a choice in this."

"But I want to do what you do!" Blaine cries out, standing up and yelling at his dad. The truth is, they don't even know what it is Dean and Castiel and Sam all do, but if the alternative means staying still, he doesn't want it. "I don't want to stay in one place!" The term wanderlust is too far out of his vocabulary, but if he could have, he'd tell Dean that's what he'll endure for the next few years.

"You don't get a choice, Blaine," Dean tells him sharply. "We're moving to a house, in Ohio, and you're going to go to school like normal kids."

Rachel doesn't fight against it, just sits on the edge of the hotel bed and appears deep in thought.

Sometimes, in the future when he's on his own, Blaine wonders if they were really ever kids at all.

The house is small, 'quaint' as Sam puts it when he helps them move in. Blaine doesn't like it. He doesn't like that his room is not the same as Rachel's. He's barely been more than ten feet away from her at any given point in their lives at this point, and knowing that he has to sleep in a different bed – in a different room, at that – puts him ill at ease. They're too old to believe in monsters and things that go bump in the night, but he likes that if anything ever happened, he'd be right there to make sure she was safe. She's more than capable of taking care of herself, of course, but she shouldn't have to. Not when Blaine's supposed to be right there fighting for her.

The first week, Rachel sneaks into his room to sleep. Their dads allow it for a few days before he feels Rachel being lifted from his bed and carried away, panic and terror rising inside him for reasons he doesn't quite understand.

He's reassured by Dean that it's fine, that he can go back to sleep, but he does so uneasily. The thought that they're trying to take Rachel away from him is gripping, and at six years old he nearly becomes an insomniac, spending the late hours worrying about why his sister is being taken away from him.

She always seems to deal better with his absence than he does hers.

They seem to settle into a routine after a couple weeks, and it isn't long until they're shipped off to first grade, papers pushed through that they had completed kindergarten out of state – lies, forged signatures, but they're bright children. Cas would often read to them on the road, and they've developed a quick sense of figuring things out from Dean. It doesn't take them long to understand the curriculum, though they're put in separate classrooms.

Blaine stays mostly to himself, quiet in the back of the room next to a kid named Mike, and whenever the teacher makes them pair up, the two do so seamlessly. They spend their recesses talking about sports, Mike loves football and mentions that he wants to play when he reaches high school, teaching Blaine all the basics of simple things he never realized he was missing. Rachel spends her breaks with a boy named Kurt that is even louder than she is, the two singing as they jump rope or sit quietly on the pavement and conspire together. Blaine asks her, sometimes, what they talk about with wide eyes and fascinated hushed whispers, but the answer of 'our future' is unsatisfying to him, but he can't place why. It's another thing he'll recall when he's older, traveling the road without her next to him, that she could plan her future so easily without him. She's at the end of his every sentence, but he's not the end of hers, and it's something that's been in place since Dean moved them to that God-forsaken town.

Sometimes, Dean and Cas will disappear for days, Sam or Bobby coming to watch over them. Blaine begs to go with them every time, because as much as he's found he likes learning – and he does, he's quick at it and he's good – he misses being on the road. Rachel is usually content to work on her homework, making sure her letters are perfect for their spelling work or that all her math is done correctly, reading aloud in silly voices to entertain herself, never asks to leave. Dean and Cas never take either of them with them, and Blaine pouts for two days every time they disappear.

"I feel you," is all Sam says to him when he's in these moods, and Blaine thinks he does. His uncle understands, because he's usually out there driving in whatever car he's found this week, always a different one when he pulls up to their house, and sometimes before Dean and Cas come back Blaine asks if Sam could take him with him when he leaves again.

Castiel thinks it's amusing, Blaine's obvious desire to be in the Impala and on the road for weeks on end, but he doesn't explain why, much beyond "You're just like your father."

Blaine questions if Rachel's anything like him, or if she's more like Cas, and after pondering for a minute Cas just answers with "No, I think she's more like your uncle than either of us."

The fact that Sam and Dean seem to part so easily these days doesn't do anything but nag at Blaine as he passes seven and eight, too afraid to ask the questions that pop up the older he gets.

_What happened between dad and Sam? _

_Were they ever as close as Rachel and me?_

_Did they ever love each other like Rachel and me?_

_Why don't they want to be around each other all the time anymore? _

He gets the answers much later, when things start to fall apart, because the answers aren't suitable for a nine year old to hear quite yet.

There's a lot they're not telling him, he realizes, and while Rachel's started dreaming of a life outside of their family, outside of Ohio and the backseat of the Impala, Blaine just wants answers to things he doesn't know how to ask about yet.

_**oh mama, i can hear your crying  
you're so scared & all alone  
hangman is coming down from the gallows & i don't have very long**_

During school vacations, Dean and Cas allow them back on the road with them. They travel from the east coast to the west, stopping in places like Virginia or Oklahoma, Wisconsin or Wyoming. They're still not informed on _why_, but Rachel's never been that curious about it anyways. She enjoys being in the car for hours on end, laying with her head rested on Blaine's shoulder as they each listen to their own music in headphones from the iPods their uncle got for them the summer they turned ten, not that it makes much of a difference. Rachel's found show tunes and pop music, and Blaine's discovered newer rock, but they tend to gravitate towards the classic rock they're so accustomed to when they're out like this. Sometimes one of their iPods will die, and they share headphones. Blaine doesn't mention that he likes those times the best, because he can hear her singing softly. She hasn't had any training, just joined the choir in their elementary school, but she already has a beautiful voice that he can tell he wants to listen to for the rest of his life.

Even if they've found small groups of friends – Rachel with Kurt, Tina, Mercedes, Blaine with Mike and Artie – they still stick to each other more often than not. Their friends grumble about it occasionally, especially when they end up in the same class in fifth grade, but they refuse to be separated. They've spent too much time apart in recent years, always in separate classrooms and Rachel still being pulled out of Blaine's room whenever she tries to slip inside of it. But no one understands just how much they need each other. At the end of the day, they're all they really have. Dean and Cas love them, but they disappear and leave them under others care more often than Blaine thinks they should. Kurt may share Rachel's dreams for the future, but it will be Blaine on her side in the end.

He knows this, at the age of 11. Knows that he's going to spend his whole life with her, that it's not really up for debate.

By the summer they turn 12, Dean and Cas stop in South Dakota to visit Bobby. His house is as comfortable to the twins as their own house and the back of the Impala is; all three surrounding them with the feeling of _home _they just don't get anywhere else. They've been raised by this man as much as they have by their own fathers and their uncle, but something is different this time around. There's a tense feeling in the air, one Blaine can't quite place, but Rachel seems to sense it too and holds tightly onto his hand whenever she can. They've been getting looks more and more often from Dean when they do things like this, hold one another closer than they should, but Cas just reminds him that it was only natural.

"They're twins," he'd say in an even voice, the same one he always used, and Dean would look away before muttering that it shouldn't change a thing.

They're there for a few days before Dean calls them inside from where they were wandering around the lot, the two of them walking inside like it's a death march. They know this is something big, something important, and it isn't until they see the line of men leaning against various fixtures in the kitchen that it seems to hit them just what's happening.

"You two are getting older now, and we've decided you're finally old enough to learn the truth about your family," Sam starts, Dean fidgeting with the bottle of beer in his hands. He clearly looks like this isn't something he wants to do, but Blaine's interest is just as piqued as Rachel's appears to be, both of them leaning forward across the rickety table in the middle of Bobby's kitchen, Castiel glancing at Sam before waving him forward.

It started, they found out, generations before they could even imagine. Their family was destined to be hunters – try as they might to derive from the path set out for them, they always ended up there. They'd been to hell, to heaven, and back again. They'd met the Devil, they'd met God. None of the words coming out of their mouths seemed believable, but as both Dean and Sam pulled down the neck of their shirts to show off their anti-possession tattoos, the same ones that were embedded in the skin of Rachel and himself, things started feeling a little different.

"You hunt monsters?" was all Rachel could find herself saying, sounding incredibly skeptical.

"Ghosts, goblins, vampires, werewolves," Dean listed, "Dragons, at one point."

"Dragons?" Blaine asks, his eyes wide and for the first time he's believing the words out of his father's mouth.

"We've seen things you can't even think up," Bobby grunts from his spot; he'd remained pretty quiet through the whole exchange, Sam and Dean taking most of the responsibility for the story. They learn that their other father used to be an angel, one of the chosen few sons of God, but that he fell after they helped avert the apocalypse, his powers never fully returned in their complete form. He'd had enough strength to raise Sam out of a cage in Hell, to save him from spending eternity with the archangels Lucifer and Michael, but that he had been helped. That any remaining powers he had were completely drained when Blaine and Rachel showed up, to be taken under the care of Dean, and their ribs had been etched with a language they could never hope to learn that kept them out of sight of any heavenly being.

It was terrifying and exciting to learn all these things, and Blaine wanted to know more about it – how many different monsters had they fought, would he ever get a chance to go out and fight with them, had they ever lost a battle of importance – but Rachel had a question of her own that Blaine had never even thought of before, startling him into silence.

"How did we come to you?" she asks quietly, and by the way her nails dig into her thigh just below the hem of her shorts underneath the table, Blaine can tell she was putting a lot of weight into the question. He wonders if she'd been thinking this for years, and just never said anything, but he couldn't very well ask her in front of the rest of their family.

Dean looks at Cas at the question, but Sam is the one who tells him that it might as well come out now too. It takes a minute before Dean pulls a chair out from the other side of the table and sits down and begins to tell them the story of how there was a time, back in Kansas, when Dean fell for a woman with dark brown hair, eyes that seemed to set him on fire, and a voice that could kill when she sang. Blaine's first instinct is to look towards his sister, and Dean just chuckles a little, agreeing that Rachel is the spitting image of their mother.

"How come she's not around?" Rachel inquires quietly, her voice so soft it nearly broke his own heart to know that she definitely had been thinking about this for a while. He wonders if she felt abandoned, neglected, all by a woman Blaine had never bothered to wonder about before.

"She didn't want the life we lead," Castiel says simply, stepping in when Dean fails to come up with a good reason. "She had her own path that was separate from ours, and it didn't include children. But your father doesn't abandon family, and so he graciously took you two from her so that she could have her life while you could have yours."

"She doesn't want us?" Blaine has never heard his sister sound so dejected, so small and he wraps an arm around her shoulders before Dean could say anything about it, their father shaking his head 'no' sadly.

It's the saddest part of their story, even more heartbreaking than finding out that almost everyone their parents had ever loved had been killed in a battle far before their time.

In the end, it's why Rachel comes crawling into his bed that night in tears, Blaine unable to do anything more than hold her and tell her it'll all be okay, that he wants her, and that it should be enough for now.

He's terrified it isn't.

_**hey jude, don't be afraid  
you were made to go out and get her  
the minute you let her under your skin  
then you begin to make it better**_

He's always known he loved his sister above all else, but as they continued to pass 12 into 13, 13 into 14, Blaine realizes just how much he loved her.

How he loves her in a way he definitely should not.

Every other guy talks about various girls in their grade or the one below them, rating them and flirting with them. Finn Hudson, already on the varsity football team even if they're all freshman, had even asked Blaine about Rachel and if she was 'free'. His answer of 'no' may have come out a little sharper than intended, the image of Rachel and Finn together nearly causing him to throw up all the bile in his stomach at the very thought.

The fact of the matter was, while everyone else was finding their types and hitting on girls like Quinn Fabray and Santana Lopez, or even Brittany Pierce, Blaine's eyes focused solely on Rachel, on the way her hair swung slightly when she walked, on the way her legs seemed to grow underneath her skirts by the day. He'd spent his entire life wrapped around Rachel in some fashion or another, and he was starting to see the consequences of his actions.

He tried his best to push away the thoughts, to dwell on cheerleaders and nerds alike, to focus on blonde hair or blue eyes or anything that didn't immediately jump to the girl across the hall from him, the girl who still occasionally climbed into his bed when she couldn't sleep. For every bit as much as Blaine was coming to the conclusion that he wanted Rachel on every level there was to want a person, he knew she was coming to the same conclusions about him. It was in the way she'd stare at him occasionally when they were working on projects in one of their bedrooms, her tongue flicking around the cap of her pen while she was deep in thought, in the way she'd brush against him when she walked past even if there was room around him to avoid, in the way she'd still fall asleep with her head on his shoulder when Dean and Cas let them break free for long weekends with them in the backseat of the Impala.

But she was his sister, and Blaine knew that the feelings of love and lust he felt towards her were wrong, and he tried his best to remember that at all times.

It's a spring night when they lay in the hammock of the backyard, fingers interlaced as they swing back and forth, Rachel humming an old Beatles song under her breath. Even if she'd joined the glee club at their school by now, already starting to plan for college – for an escape she was sure was inevitable – his favorite moments were when she sang just for him, quietly to the songs they grew up listening to.

"Did you ever have your first kiss?" she asks him quietly, Blaine only able to respond with some sort of strangled noise because he's not sure where this is going, but he can nod his head that he has – at a party that Noah Puckerman threw that he didn't really want to attend, with Brittany Pierce during a round of seven minutes in heaven the previous school year. He manages to choke out a 'yes' before she hums quietly, seeming to mull it over.

"Haven't you?" he asks, even if it's not his place – and it isn't, because he's tried so hard to ignore if she even has any sort of love life, knowing he'd either burn with jealousy or ache with desire to replace the object of her affection, and he can't deal with either.

"No," she says quietly, curling into his side and looking up at him. "None of the boys in school interest me," she tells him honestly, and he can feel a lump in his throat the size of Texas that he can't seem to swallow.

"You'll find someone," he finds himself saying, which he wants to believe, wants to think that someone else will take her away from him almost as much as he can't stand the thought of that happening.

"But I want it to be with someone I trust, Blaine. Someone I know could never hurt me," she tells him, and he can't help but melt a little at the way her eyes are focused solely on him, at how tan her skin is even in the fading twilight of evening and how warm her hand is where it's rested on his chest.

"If you want," he finds himself saying, and he knows it isn't too late, not yet, that he could back out – but he doesn't want to, not even a little bit, and instead presses forward. "I could be your first kiss."

The road to hell is often paved with good intentions, he figures as she nods in agreement, a certain spark to their touch now that had been missing, or possibly just diluted only a few seconds prior. "Please," she whispers, and he'll never be able to tell her 'no', never not give her anything she wants and more.

It's awkward, on a physical basis, in the way that a first kiss should be. It takes them a few moments to figure out the right alignment of their heads, to get their lips to part just so and to trust the other completely before falling into the moment, but once they start they can't figure out a way to stop.

Blaine wouldn't ever stop, he figures, if it wasn't for breathing. But even that, he thinks, is overrated when the opposite would be a sweet death from his sister's mouth against his own.

_**i have waited a lifetime, spent my time so foolishly  
but now that I've found you, together we'll make history**_

The kiss should have changed everything for them, made their lives infinitely more complicated, but instead it seemed to do the opposite. As their freshman year of high school came to a close, the prospect of being on the road for an entire three months once more lay before them, and despite Rachel's hesitance to pack up and travel the country like they did every school vacation, Blaine was once more looking forward to it. Being on the road with Rachel and their dads was the happiest he'd remember being, even if it was going to be more difficult to hide the new aspects of their relationship from their parents.

Still, they managed, spending days sitting in the back seat of the Impala and singing along quietly to The Doors, The Who, and Clapton, fingers daring to reach out and graze each other's as secret smiles were exchanged silently from their spots. The nights were easier for them, Dean and Cas entrusting them to their own hotel room, always making sure to get one with two beds, though they rarely used more than one. They spent hours laying together, legs intertwined as they kissed, hesitant touches on glimpses of bare skin, Rachel giggling as he'd pull her on top of him. They spent more time sleeping as Dean drove them through Illinois, Kansas, and Arizona than they did in the various motels they were set up in while Dean and Cas took out one monstrosity or another.

Blaine inquired more and more about what exactly it was their fathers did as they rounded on 15, asked about the monsters and demons they fought against, asked how exactly they exercised demons and defeated vampires, listened as Dean told them about fighting things like wendigos, ghouls, and worst of all: people. He heard about the apocalypse, about how Castiel had fallen from grace and wound up a mortal human after coming in and out of existence several times, how Dean had traded his soul for Sam's life, how both Sam and Dean had traveled to hell and been rescued from the depths of it.

"It's not a life I want for you," Dean told him sternly, but even still he shared with him the journal of Blaine's grandfather, a man he never met – a man, according to Sam, he would never want to.

He knew Rachel wanted more than this, could see it in the vague disinterest betrayed in her eyes whenever they started discussing their next hunt, whenever she'd start jotting down in a notebook all her grand plans to move to New York, a city they'd never been to, despite Rachel's constant questioning of it. He tried to ignore that the end was coming for them, if still a few more years away, and would instead only sit closer to her when their inevitable parting was mentioned. A life without Rachel was not something he wanted to think about, and yet it was becoming more and more certain as he begged Dean to let him join him on a hunt, any hunt until Dean finally relented.

It was a simple case, Cas explained as Dean constantly watched over his back to make sure Blaine was keeping up, Rachel tucked away safely in a motel doing God knew what on her own. A ghost haunting an older house, a dime a dozen type of situation. Find the bones, Dean told him, salt them and burn them, and in most cases the job is done. As he lit the match to throw into the pit of bones, Blaine felt a sense of accomplishment he only ever experienced when Rachel told him she loved him, like he had done something right in his life to deserve this.

He had no idea that in the end, he'd have to give up one for the other.

The summer came to a close, Dean and Castiel dropping them off at home before taking off on a larger hunt that Sam needed help on, making sure they were safe before disappearing into the distance, and as wonderful as their summer had been, Blaine couldn't help but feel the relief at being alone, for even the tiniest bit, with Rachel.

She laughs as he pins her against the wall in their living room, the windows open and sunlight streaming in, but they lived off the traveled road a little, no one around for what felt like miles to come and spot them as his hands danced around the hem of her skirt, Rachel bucking slightly into his touch. "I know we've talked about it," she says quietly, Blaine's lips moving across her jawline and pulling on her ear as she talked, "and we said that we would wait until we're ready but-"

"Are you?" Blaine asks, eyes lighting up with a glimmer of hope and her smile lights up the already bright room as she nods, pulling his head back to her own. Their kisses turn from rushed and full of desire to slow, lingering, full of promise and potential, and Blaine can only let his grip from her hips tighten as he brings her from the wall to the stairs, both nearly stumbling as they make their way to his bedroom.

He lays her down on his bed gently, brushing hair from her face and kissing her softly, Rachel's eyes shining in the dim lighting of his bedroom as he let his hands pull her dress up and over her head, kissing her neck as she gulped at the thought of being so exposed to him. His hands were heavy and warm on her skin, her own soft and gentle as they helped to rid him of his own clothing. It was sweet and loving, everything he'd want for her first time with someone, her back arching under his fingertips and her body coming undone all because of him, giving him a sense of power and pleasure unlike any he'd ever even thought up before.

They spent their last week before school started in a place of bliss, completely alone and cut off from the world just like they'd always felt they were. They were Rachel and Blaine, Blaine and Rachel, and no one else was ever going to come between them. They'd sealed their fate and interwove their futures together in the most intimate way either knew of, and Blaine felt like they truly belonged to one another in every sense of the word. He'd never love another like he loved Rachel, and blood relation or not, he was assured for the first time that she felt the same.

_**time everlasting, time to play besides  
time ain't on my side, time i'll never know**_

The fall came slowly, summer holding on as long as it could and while attending school as something more than siblings was unacceptable, they did their best to maintain the relationship they'd been building while portraying innocent . Rachel attended football games with her small group of friends, cheering on a team she didn't particularly care for, members of it involving her glee club the only real excuse she had to go. Blaine continued to keep his head down, working out any aggression he felt towards the boys now more openly hitting on the girl he couldn't show off as his own by spending countless hours in the weight training room, swinging fists at a punching bag until he's so sweaty and gross he can barely stand to be around himself anymore.

All was easier said than done, and things were more difficult when their fathers were puttering around the house, Dean teaching Blaine how exactly to fix cars, Castiel helping Rachel get her plans together for her inevitable move in another two and a half years. "It may seem far," Cas had said over dinner one night as Rachel panicked about the perks of staying in a dorm versus getting an apartment, "but it's not that much time."

Blaine hated those discussions, Dean even more so than he did, and they'd often retire to the garage where an old, black '69 Camaro was sitting on cement blocks while they fixed it up. It was to be Blaine's car, one day, at least until Dean passed on the Impala – a feat Blaine wasn't sure was ever going to happen, really, and he was content with the car his father chose for him. "Nothing is better than a classic," Dean told him one night while they tinkered with the engine. "Things were just made better back then."

It was a line countless people had said, but coming from Dean it settled into Blaine's chest. He took the words to heart in a way that Rachel wouldn't have. She didn't want to work with her hands, didn't want to spend her life on the run, wanted the fame and the attention and the praise for her talents. And she deserved it, Blaine knew, but that didn't mean he liked it.

So he'd focus on the car, he'd focus on his schoolwork, and late at night when they were sure all was quiet, he'd focus on Rachel, and that was his life boiled down. It was hardly considered the highlight of his life, and had it not been for her mere existence pushing him through every day, he wouldn't have had any significant memories at all from the time period. Every single one he did carry with him all centered around her.

There was the night of the fall dance, Rachel swung around on Finn Hudson's arm at the school but her gaze directed at Blaine more often than not; and try as he may to pay attention to Santana Lopez on his own arm, he couldn't focus on anyone but her. It wasn't until they arrived home only moments apart, Rachel ducking away from Finn as he tried to kiss her before heading inside the dark and empty house to Blaine that they were united. He did the best he could to make up for what had been his own shit night, turning on her favorite Elvis song and pulling her towards their backyard where the music played quietly over them in the moonlight, twirling her around in the damp grass just to hear her laugh.

There was Christmas, which had never been an elaborate affair, always quiet but homey. Sam would often show up the night before, occasionally dragging Bobby with him, but Blaine never saw Rachel happier than when they were all joined around the tree with the fireplace warming their small but inviting living room, unwrapping presents in her reindeer sweater and a pair of pajama pants Blaine suspiciously believed to be his own. It was quiet as ever that year, neither twin asking for too much – they never did, didn't need anything more than their family – but Rachel had been given the biggest surprise of all. It came in a simple envelope, a plane ticket to New York for their spring vacation, a world of questions in her eyes as she turned to look at Dean and Cas and ask about it.

"Your mom offered to let you stay with her," Dean said after a minute, though he looked slightly uncomfortable at the mention of the woman neither had yet met, and Rachel froze for a moment at the words. "If you want to stay with her, you could be in New York for a week. I know that's where you want to head after high school and- I want what's best for you, Rach. Even if it's nothing I know."

She'd flung her arms around both their fathers before talking excitedly to Blaine for nearly three days straight about the sights she planned on seeing, not once noticing that he hadn't gotten a ticket as well, no invitation to go see their mother, and it stung deeper than Blaine would have thought. Dean told him, later on, that he had debated about sending him with Rachel, but thought the distance might be best for them. That Blaine could come on a real trip with him and Cas, without worrying about Rachel being left behind, and Blaine only nodded as he focused his attention on the carburetor in front of him.

Their spring break was the first time she wasn't with him in as long as he could remember, he, Dean and Cas dropping her off at the airport and Blaine kissing her cheek as platonically as he could while wrapping his arms tight around her, the excitement and fear visible in her eyes as she promised she'd come back to him in only seven days' time. They drove to an empty field nearby, Dean cracking open a beer and handing one to Blaine almost without thinking, Cas muttering quietly to himself as they sat on the hood of the Impala and watched planes fly overhead, knowing that in one of them was the center of all three of their lives, their light in the darkness, and that one day she'd get on a plane and never come back. It was a thought he carried with him as Dean taught him the rigors of hunting, all while trying to remind him that this wasn't what he wanted from him – he wanted Blaine in college, like Rachel, wanted him to have dreams just as big as she had. Blaine kept silent, because it was easier that way, easier than admitting that while his twin had everything figured out the only thing he knew for certain was her.

The night they reunited, they didn't sleep, instead traced lines across one another's bodies as she told him about the city, how wonderful and perfect she had fit in there. How nowhere else in the entire country had felt so right for her, how even their mother – a retired Broadway actress, now running a prestigious university's drama department – was willing to welcome Rachel into her life, show her the things Rachel could one day have. Blaine listened with open ears, and when it got to be too much, when it was just another reminder of everything he'd one day lose, he covered her words with a kiss, both sinking into one another time and time again.

They had years before they had to say goodbye, Blaine figured, and there was no need to bring it up now.

As spring returned, bringing with it a National's win for Rachel and her glee club, driving lessons and the end of their sophomore year, Blaine could sense that there was something different about their upcoming summer, something that differed from the past 15. They had, of course, planned to pack up and leave the second school released them, Blaine excited to join in on the hunt once more while Rachel decided to take the summer to relax, the last that she could.

Everything seemed to change, of course, three days before school let out, Rachel and Blaine convinced they had the house to themselves until the next evening. They were trying to pretend to study for finals, but books lay strewn across their living room carpet as Blaine brought his sister's lips to his own, kissing her lightly before she furthered the action, her fingers feather light against his jaw as he let out a small groan. His hand wove in her hair, dragging her into him even more, her teeth dragging lightly across his bottom lip until they sank down in unison when the words "what the hell is going on in here?" startled them.

She sprang away from him as Blaine whirled around to see Dean and Cas standing in the archway leading into the living room, Castiel looking completely nonplussed while Dean seethed, the hand wrapped around his duffel bag nearly slate white from how tight he was gripping it, and Blaine had no idea what to say to explain this away.

He didn't get a chance to even explain it as Dean set into action, grabbing his arm and pulling him away while Rachel curled in on herself on the floor, watching with wide eyes and apprehension. "I can-"

"Not right now," Dean replied gruffly, interrupting him and leading him out of the house. He was vaguely frightened of what Dean had the abilities to do to him, but trusted that even if he had just walked in on his children making out – fully clothed, Blaine added bitterly in his own mind – he wouldn't do anything too drastic to them.

Blaine kept silent until they were in the garage, Dean leaning against the hood of the Camaro that was to be brought to Bobby's in a few days' time for safekeeping over the summer while they ran across the country in the Impala, glaring at Blaine as he anxiously pulled at the sleeves of his sweatshirt, too ashamed to look at his father. It wasn't that he thought what he and Rachel did was wrong, by any means, it was the most natural thing in the world for them – but he had known all along that Dean would never understand, that Castiel would never approve, and that's why it had all been kept a secret.

"I'm sorry," Blaine blurts out, because it's the first thing he can think of to say, but Dean only snorts in response, clearly not believing him for an instant.

"How long?" he asks instead, and Blaine blanches. He wants to say it's been his whole life, that he's wanted her for as long as he can remember, from the day she wrapped her small hand around his, but Dean doesn't care about that. He won't see the love there, only sees the physical act of what they were doing, and so Blaine uses that instead.

"About a year," he tells him, "a little more, I think."

"I thought she had a boyfriend – that tall guy, Flynn or something like that-"

"Finn," Blaine corrects, "but no they're not- she doesn't like him," he explains.

"Why would she when she has someone right under the same roof?" Dean mutters, running his hand over his face as he stares up at the ceiling above them, a small 'Jesus Christ' falling from his lips. Blaine looks down at his feet again, suddenly feeling like he's five years old. They'd never really gotten into trouble, always too well behaved to act out, and now the one time they had Dean has no idea how to punish them anymore than they know how to apologize for it.

"I'm sorry," Blaine tries once more, but Dean just lets out a heavy sigh before leaving him behind in the garage, continuing to mutter about plans under his breath as he makes his way back to the house, Blaine's eye line moving straight to his sisters window to see her sitting in front of it, watching him.


	2. Part II

_**baby, when i think about you, i think about love  
darling, don't live without you, and your love**_

Things didn't blow up quite as badly as Blaine had expected, the two being brought to Bobby's house in South Dakota for the summer instead of being dragged around the country and left alone in various motel rooms. Bobby didn't say anything about their arrival, about what it was they were doing there, but Blaine couldn't help but notice how they were put on opposite ends of the second floor, Rachel smiling sadly at him as she slipped into her room at the end of the hall while he settled into his at the top of the stairs.

"You'll be safe here," Cas had told them as Dean talked to Bobby quietly in the kitchen, Blaine still too worried and torn over with guilt to question what they were discussing.

"We're always safe," Rachel reminds her father quietly. "You've never made us feel unsafe, wherever we are or wherever you are."

Castiel looks away for a moment, his blue eyes focused on something in the distance, almost like he's reminded of another time, and Blaine realizes not for the first time how much of his life they'd never heard about. Dean and Sam, they know their stories, their war battles and scars, but Castiel is a deep mystery to both in almost every way, except for how much he cares about them.

"Not safe enough," Castiel replies finally as Dean steps back into the dusty office Bobby spends most of his time in.

"Here's the deal, you two are to stop whatever this nonsense is. Bobby has eyes like a hawk, and trust me, you don't want him catching you anymore than you want us to. We're leaving you here for the summer, and we're not sure when we'll be around but if we hear about one incident, we're separating you two for good." They both nod, looking down at their hands as they take in the weight of his words. Separation two years early isn't acceptable in their books, something that causes them to so desperately meet up in the sound proof room in the basement under the ruse of looking for something of non-importance as they touch for the first time in what feels like years, even if it had only been days.

They learned quickly that as long as they stayed out of Bobby's way, he wouldn't really care what they did. Blaine spent most afternoons working on finishing the Camaro so that when they turned 16, he could properly drive, while Rachel often laid on one of the car hoods and read a book or listened to her iPod, content to watch him hard at work. Bobby had made comments now and then, that she wasn't a hood ornament and to get off his cars, but he spent most days inside with a bottle of liquor and countless books open in front of him. They soon found out that it was simple to keep Bobby content and out of their hair – they'd make real meals, often together, and Bobby would leave them be. Whenever their dads showed up, they were careful to make sure there was nothing more than what was seen on the surface, if only to placate them, and while Dean's eyes bored into their skin, they were perfectly adept at playing innocent.

On rainy days, which were few and far between, Rachel would often retire to her bedroom and watch musicals on the small TV inside while Blaine sat quietly on the floor of Bobby's office, reading up on all the different monsters there were out in the world, how to defeat them, how to notice them. For all his talk of Blaine going to college, Dean seemed to accept that this was what Blaine wanted. School was only something he was enduring because he had to, because Rachel was there and watching her perform at various events made it worthwhile. He was smart, quick and sharp, but school didn't hold his interest. He couldn't foresee himself sitting behind a desk for the next 40 years of his life as an accountant or a marketing executive, couldn't see getting stuck in one city for more than a few months at a time, didn't want a life like that. Blaine wanted exactly what his fathers' had; an open road, a good soundtrack, and someone who would always be there beside him.

He'd settle for two of three, though. He wasn't selfish enough to stop Rachel from going after her dreams.

It was one of the rainy days when Blaine was flipping through one of Bobby's books, spacing out more often than not and staring at the ceiling above him where he could hear his sister singing along to _Funny Girl –_ her favorite movie of all time – that his mind wandered over a subject he was hesitant about bringing up.

Bobby had always been more relaxed with anything that Blaine and Rachel were up to from the very beginning, hardly blinking an eye, and it pulled at something in Blaine's brain until he had to mention it, because he couldn't see why. While he didn't think that there was anything wrong with being hopelessly in love with his sister in every way a brother normally wasn't, most people did, and most people would condemn them had they ever found out they did more than hug one another lightly or kiss each other on the cheek.

"How come you didn't freak out like Dean and Cas did?" Blaine finds himself asking, breaking the relative silence that normally falls over the room. Bobby doesn't look up from where he's looking up something for Dean in a heavy book that looks older than the rest in the room, barely acknowledges Blaine at all above a short grunt that might have been a chuckle coming from anyone else, but Blaine waits patiently because he knows Bobby will eventually get frustrated enough with Blaine's attention focused on him enough to tell him.

"What was there to be surprised about?" Bobby finally responds after a few minutes, and it causes Blaine's eyebrows to shoot up into his hairline in surprise, that someone could have seen it coming when he hadn't even known it would become a reality he'd one day live in.

"What?" he squeaks, barely able to clear his throat and try again before Bobby raises his head to face where Blaine is still seated on the ground, surrounded by books.

"You're not the first line of Winchesters to cross a line, boy," Bobby says simply, but this does nothing but confuse Blaine further.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Use your brain," Bobby snaps, turning back to his book, and Blaine tries to think about exactly where Bobby is trying to go with this.

"But- dad and Sam- they wouldn't, because then Dean wouldn't have gotten-"

"Dean's been down this road, kid, he knows how it can end." It's the word 'end' that stops Blaine's babbling, his eyes once more glancing upward towards where his sister still is, completely unaware of the conversation unraveling only a floor below her.

"But how?" Blaine asks, pleads basically, and Bobby takes off his cap to rub his forehead and mutters about damn curiosity killing cats before he motions for Blaine to grab another cup, pouring him some of the scotch that had been sitting on the edge of his desk for a day and a half now. Blaine's hesitant about accepting the drink, but when Bobby snaps at him to drink up, he does so anyways, the alcohol burning his throat as it travels down his system.

It takes Bobby half a drink to finally start, but once he does he doesn't seem inclined to stop. He tells him how Sam and Dean used to be inseparable, even more so than Blaine and Rachel, how their names ran together and when one appeared without the other you knew bad was coming. How Dean had spent years traveling with his father while Sam went off to live a life he thought he wanted, only to be dragged back into it – because like they had told Blaine and Rachel all those years ago, there was no other option for them. This was their destiny, their fate, and there was absolutely no avoiding it, try as they might. Having dreams in this family – and Blaine can't help but look towards the stairs again, Bobby nodding in agreement because he knows Blaine's worried about his sister – it's a curse, and it's only going to hurt in the end.

"But Rachel and I are different than Sam and Dean," Blaine tries to argue, but Bobby just guffaws at that.

"In the end, different don't mean shit," Bobby tells him before shushing him so he can continue his story. He goes on about how there were all the telltale signs that anyone could see – the lingering gazes that seemed a little too heated for brothers, the need to make sure the other was there at all times. The amount of times they'd die just to save the other, over and over again.

"Gets lonely out there," Bobby says as he refills their drinks. "When you're traveling the roads for so long with only one person for company, don't matter if they're blood or not. They become your soulmate if they weren't before, and everything gets thirty times of fucked. You'll literally die for the person next to you, and if you won't then you have no point of being with them at all."

Blaine would die for Rachel, he knows. He'd go to hell and back and sell his soul and do all the fucked up things Dean once did for Sam and vice versa, and there's not a doubt in his mind that he'd do it without hesitation. He'd sacrifice himself for her, time and time again, and he thinks she'd do the same for him. The only thing she won't give up is her future, her future is the one thing she might love more than him.

"How did Castiel come into play, then? If Dean and Sam loved one another so much?"

Bobby looks hesitant to travel down this path, looks like he thinks he's said too much already. It's one thing not to hate someone for their actions, but another to give evidence that they're not the only ones who've traveled down this road, and they both know Dean wouldn't want Blaine or Rachel to know anything about this. Eventually though, he caves, and after a brief overview of the specifics of Castiel's arrival, he gets down to the bare bones of it. How Cas came in, shook Dean's entire world in a way he hadn't expected after saving him. How Dean hadn't felt he was worth saving, how Cas gave up everything for Dean, how Castiel literally fell from grace in order to save Dean and Sam and the rest of the world alongside them all.

"Love comes in all different forms, and I think Dean's always gon' love Sam in some way, but Castiel is better for him. Healthier." The look Bobby shoots Blaine doesn't go unnoticed by the younger boy, who wants nothing more than to curl up in himself. To think that there was anyone better for Rachel was absurd, hurtful, something he wanted to avoid at all costs.

It's something he'll have to face sooner than he expects.

_**one step ahead, one step behind me  
now you gotta run to get even  
make future plans, don't dream about yesterday  
c'mon, turn, turn this thing around**_

They're stuck staying at Bobby's even as the school year starts, Rachel putting up a fuss about going back to Ohio, how her show choir needs her, how her future is there and packaged for her and she can't just give up and move to South Dakota in their junior year because their fathers don't trust them. Harsh words are thrown in the Singer kitchen, Blaine mostly staying silent because he doesn't care – he'll miss Mike, of course, the only true friend he's had over the years, and Puck wasn't half bad now that he was friends with Rachel, helped look out for her. But Blaine doesn't care about ever going back to Lima, if truth be told, and so he'll go where they say.

Rachel is much more defiant, and as Dean tells her that he's her father and she'll do what she's told, Blaine can tell she comes close to slapping him in her frustration. "It's not my fault you're never there to watch over us!" she yells, storming out of the room dramatically and slamming the door to the room she's begrudgingly made her own hard enough to rattle the frame, Dean covering his face in his hands as he sits at the kitchen table.

Castiel is the one to go to her, to talk to her, if only because Dean told Blaine not to move a muscle when he tried to flee to her, and while it takes her two days to reappear at any time aside from the dead of night when everyone is asleep, she finally apologizes to her father for her cruel words.

Still, life in South Dakota hadn't been in her cards, and suddenly all her plans for their junior year are abandoned and she has to refocus them. They're sent to a public high school a few miles away, Rachel muttering quietly the entire drive there. Now that the Camaro is up and running, giving them some sense of freedom from the family they have sitting at home, he's almost inclined to take her away for good, both of them hitting the road and leaving everything behind.

If he thought for a second she'd agree, he'd do it in an instant.

Instead, they fight through a new school, new people, Rachel signing up for the drama club by second period without worrying about cliques and who might be upset about it. He laughs to himself as he sees her pull out a gold star sticker from her notebook, something she'd started doing when they were young and Dean told her she'd be a star one day, just like the ones in the sky, her tongue between her teeth as she signs her name in her signature loopy script.

"Hear you're the new kid," a taller boy says as he walks up to where Blaine is leaning against a locker, watching as Rachel examines the rest of the bulletin board, surely on the lookout for some sort of choir she can join.

"Heard right," Blaine replies easily, sparing him a passing glance before his eyes settle on his sister once more.

"Heard that your twin is hot as fuck," the boy continues, Blaine's body immediately tensing.

"What's it to you?" Blaine asks, voice a little more harsh as he turns to examine the haughty looking boy who seemed to think a popped collar on his polo was acceptable.

"The girls around here are boring, too easy. And if that," he says, nodding to where Rachel is now frowning down at her class schedule, "is indeed your sister, then she looks like she's going to need to be won over. And I love nothing more than a good challenge."

"She's taken," Blaine states, trying to keep his temper in check but he really wants nothing more than to punch this guy already, and he's just met him.

"Impossible. Even if she has a boyfriend back home, she won't for long." He grins before walking away, Blaine left at his locker with clenched fists and an anger he doesn't quite know what to do with.

He doesn't see him for the rest of the day, which Blaine assumes is a good thing because he's not sure he'd be able to control himself from punching him in the smarmy looking face, but when he goes to Rachel's locker to grab her before leaving for the afternoon, she's laughing at the guy in question, her smile easy and natural and Blaine stops altogether in his tracks.

He's never thought about anyone else swooping in on her effectively before; growing up in the same town with the same people since you're six years old means you know pretty much everyone and everything and Rachel had always been too good for the rest of them. He's realizing his biggest fear right in front of him, in the way Rachel gently shoves the other boy away as she laughs, and it's far worse than any demon, ghost, monster that Dean and Cas can inform him about, far worse than her running off to New York.

It's Rachel falling for someone that isn't him, leaving him without physically parting from him, and Blaine doesn't think he can take that.

He interrupts them smoothly, his arm slinking around Rachel's waist in a predatory way and while the boy raises an eyebrow he doesn't say anything, Rachel beaming up at Blaine's presence. "This is Sebastian," she introduces, and the boy – Sebastian, Blaine seethes internally, holds out a hand to shake as if they didn't talk only a few hours prior. Blaine takes it, his grip far too tight for the situation, but Sebastian hardly blinks in response. "He's in the glee club they have here, which is sadly even worse off than the one back home. They make New Directions look like Vocal Adrenaline," she grimaces, Sebastian chuckling even if he doesn't have a clue what Rachel's referencing.

"I'm sure you'll whip them into shape in no time," Blaine promises, ignoring Sebastian's agreement as he begins to pull his sister away, Sebastian trailing behind regardless of Blaine's attempt at snubbing him.

"Well, there's a lovely girl in there named Sally in there, and a boy named- what was his name?" she asks Sebastian, nodding in agreement when he tells her 'Wesley', Rachel repeating the name as she fills Blaine in on her new group that she'll surely make shine without effort. "They welcomed me after I sang my heartfelt rendition of _Faithfully_ by Journey, you know how that's always been one of my favorites, and they said I was an excellent addition to their group." Her eyes are shining in the way that only happens when people tell her they like her, so rare is it that it happens despite how Blaine thinks everyone should, but they tend to see her abrasive personality and her strong determination and it puts them off.

"We should have no problem placing if we make you our lead," Sebastian says, falling into step on Rachel's other side, and Blaine really wants to know what kind of universe would do this to him, wonders if this is the karma he's finally getting for sleeping with his sister for over a year. She doesn't seem to notice as Sebastian keeps hitting on her, only flirts back instinctively, and by the time they reach the Camaro, Blaine feels no remorse as he closes the door on Rachel and quietly tells Sebastian to fuck off. "Someone's awfully protective," Sebastian mutters back just as quietly so Rachel won't hear from where she's now fiddling with the iPod until Blaine gets into the car.

"Back off," he warns him quietly. "She isn't going to fall for your smarmy charm, so leave her be."

Sebastian just laughs, waving goodbye to Rachel before he turns and walks away, shouting a small "See you tomorrow, Winchester," in Blaine's direction, leaving him with his blood boiling until Rachel rolls down the window to ask if he plans on standing there all day. Her voice is soft though, like she can feel the tension he's sure is rolling off his body in waves, and it brings him back down to earth, causing him to turn around and smile at her, nodding before moving to the driver's side of the car.

He knows he has to figure out a way to remind Rachel that all she needs is him, that Sebastian's charms may actually work despite their false nature, that Rachel is easier to read than a book and all it takes it the right flattery and a little bit of talent before she'll fall like putty into the boys waiting hands. Blaine simply can't allow that.

_**& if you don't love me now  
you will never love me again **_

His need for her intensifies the more Sebastian lurks around, the marks that litter her body from his grip becoming too tight or his mouth biting a little too hard well hidden under her dresses and her bright smile, though he can see that she's worried about him. He can't vocalize it, because if she doesn't see it – the way Sebastian is circling around her like a bird and its prey – he doesn't want her to know about it. He's not stupid enough to tell her about her other options, not when she still seems to be pleased enough with him, and even if he sometimes wonders if he should let her go, push her towards anyone other than himself, he's too inherently selfish to dream of doing such a thing.

Sebastian seems to know it gets under Blaine's nerves, flares up his senses and the desire to punch him in the face grows infinitely every time he sees Rachel laughing at something the boy has said, every time she smiles up at him and every time the smirky bastard so much as brushes against her in the hallway.

She needs friends outside of Blaine, if they're to stay in South Dakota for a while. Blaine is sensible and can see this, even if he doesn't like it. He just wishes she'd choose someone else to spend her time with instead of Sebastian. Even the rest of the guys in her glee club seem harmless, the girls quiet but kind and any one of them would be a great friend, he knows, one that wouldn't make him want to forget everything he knew about right versus wrong and claim Rachel as his own in front of the entire student body.

It takes her three months to realize that Sebastian has been hitting on her, and it takes Sebastian actually making a move for her to figure everything out. Blaine feels like he got punched in the stomach when he walks in on the two kissing in their kitchen, Rachel pulling away from the other boy before running off to God knows where, Blaine only glaring until Sebastian leaves the premises with a promise that he'll be back for more.

It takes all of Bobby's strength to hold Blaine back from chasing after him.

"He may be a dick but he'd be good for her," Bobby says later that night when Blaine is sitting at the kitchen table, staring into nothing because these are thoughts that he's been wondering about for a quarter of a year.

"You mean, because he's not me?" Blaine asks, his voice hostile and tough and Bobby can't do anything but mutter about how stupid teenagers are under his breath as he walks back into his office, looking up some sort of monster that Dean's yet to encounter before.

The implication of his words is heavy though, and it's something he spends four days arguing with himself about, Rachel trying to explain that she hadn't initiated it, that she'd been too shocked to pull away, but Blaine doesn't care.

He doesn't even really feel betrayed, if he thinks about it, which he tries not to. Rachel has always been too good for him, wanted so much more than he could ever really give her, and it's for that reason alone that he pulls her through the cars in Bobby's lot to a cluster of trees they'd discovered when they were kids, where they'd pretend they were the only people in the world, attempting to survive with no one but each other.

They were never really pretending much at all.

His heart is breaking before he can even get the words out, catching her lips for one last kiss – after this, he'll be done, pull away and let her free to live the life she's supposed to, but he needs one moment to cherish before he breaks both of them apart.

"You're upset with me," she says, her voice hushed in the quiet of the trees and it's all he can do not to lean into the hand that she's placed upon his cheek, to abandon the plan he's attempting to implement, to tell her how gorgeous she looks with her eyes wide and sparkling and her lips slightly parted and red from their kisses.

"I'm not upset with you," is what he says instead, shaking his head. "I could never really be upset with you, Rachel." She smiles, ducking her head as a blush crawls over her skin and it brings a pang to his chest to know that he won't get to see that secretive look in his direction anymore. "But I do believe that some things need to change."

"What things?" she asks, involuntarily on edge already at those words and she's trying to be strong, but she doesn't like changes as it is and she definitely doesn't appear to like wherever it is Blaine is trying to lead her.

"I think that we need to let each other go," he whispers, unable to look at her but the absence of her hand on his skin is more than enough for him to know that she's upset, a quiet dramatic gasp escaping her lips. He chances a glance up at her to see her staring in the opposite direction, and when he attempts to sweep away a stray hair from her face, she hits his hand away.

"Why would you say this? Is it because of Sebastian, because I promise, Blaine, I don't-"

"It's not Sebastian, not entirely," he assures her. "He plays a part in that it made me realize how much I'm holding you back. I love you too much for you to not explore your other options out there, Rach."

"I don't want options," she argues, standing up and he can see the rage and hurt and abandonment written clear as day across her now stormy features. "I want _you_."

"You can't have me anymore."

It's the single hardest statement he'll ever have to utter, can't imagine a pain worse than overhearing the choked back, anguished sob escaping his sister before she storms off, and it's all he can do not to run after her.

_This is what you wanted_. It's what he needs, really, to let her go so she can see that she deserves so much more from life. It's why he doesn't say anything when Sebastian shows up to their house the next evening, Rachel walking past him without so much as a single word before her hand is clasped around the boys as they head to his car, Rachel talking animatedly about something that happened in her club that afternoon.

It's why, when he's done with the bottle of whiskey Bobby left in the cabinet he thinks the twins don't know about while he's off on a hunt somewhere, he hides himself away in the panic room in the basement, because if he doesn't, he'll go after her, crawl into bed and ask of her to make it better for him.

He misses her.

He misses her touch, her smell, her taste and most of all her love. She refuses to talk to him, sitting as far away from him on their commutes to school and gets a ride home from Sebastian almost every afternoon. She won't look at him when they're eating dinner, and he's heartbreakingly alone.

He wants to be surprised at how quickly she seems to move on with Sebastian, but the truth is he isn't. She's never loved him quite the same as he loved her, and it's never more apparent than the day he overhears her say 'I love you' to Sebastian, a mere month after he's pushed her away. Sebastian is practically floating on air.

Blaine wants to kill him.

He spends more and more time working on the Camaro, on bulking it up in much the same way that the Impala is. Whenever Dean and Cas come home, Dean helps him. They don't talk while they work, Dean helping Blaine with creating a hidden away storage like the one in the trunk of the car Blaine's spent more time in than anywhere else in life, Blaine tinkering underneath the hood.

"Your sister's boyfriend seems-"

"Like a dick," Blaine grumbles, interrupting one of the few times Dean actually attempts to bring up Sebastian. Dean raises an eyebrow as he wipes his hand on one of the spare clothes laying around, closing the trunk and sliding on top of it and patting the spot next to him. Blaine joins him, reluctantly, because he had a feeling this day would come.

"Cas says you need to lower your hostility towards him," Dean tells him after a minute.

"He's an _asshole_," Blaine emphasizes. "And I was stupid enough to just hand her over to him."

"Not stupid," Dean shakes his head, correcting him. "Selfless." They're quiet and Blaine can tell Dean would rather have a beer in him before they have this conversation, but the time seems to have arisen and Blaine can't help but feel like he'd probably like one too. "You did right by her kid."

"She deserves to be happy," Blaine mumbles, looking down at his hands. He wonders if Dean ever expected this, when they were little and fell asleep hand in hand in one motel bed or another, when Rachel would scream until Blaine came back in sight, when they would run around and tackle one another in the middle of fields. If Dean ever expected to have to tell his kids to stop fucking around, because it's frowned upon.

"We should have separated you more when you were younger," Dean laughs, but it's humorless and dry and Blaine can tell that he doesn't really mean it. "Forced you to go with Sam more often or something."

"We wouldn't have allowed it," Blaine says quietly, and Dean just nods.

"I know."

Rachel calls them inside for dinner a moment later, and while Dean hesitates for a moment, he nods and leads the way, telling Blaine to wash up before he gets to the table.

_**it's a death trap, it's a suicide rap  
we gotta get out while we're young**_

To his credit, Blaine attempts to be nicer to Sebastian. He does it more for Rachel's benefit than his fathers – Dean and Cas aren't around enough for Blaine to really worry about them, which probably played it's hand in how far his relationship with Rachel escalated in the first place.

Sebastian doesn't seem to care whether Blaine hates him or not, told him as much one afternoon when Blaine found him sitting on Bobby's front porch smoking.

"Rachel's going to kill you if she catches you doing that," Blaine gave as a warning, Sebastian only laughing in response.

"You Winchesters aren't nearly as quick as everyone seems to think you are, are you?" He asks, eyes piercing Blaine's own as he looks at him in confusion. No one really took much notice to either him or Rachel in their school, and no one knew of their fathers, a wariness settling in on Blaine as he closed the hood of the Camaro.

"What are you talking about?" he asks, leaning against his car and staring dead at Sebastian, waiting for some sort of explanation. If he's learned anything from Dean it's that you can never be too careful, and someone who seems to know too much probably isn't a some_one_ but a some_thing _and you always have to be prepared.

Blaine is hardly prepared if this comes to a duel of some sort, but Bobby is inside and Bobby can get just about anything done.

"I've heard about Dean, Sam and Castiel. How they managed to stop the apocalypse, even after being pushed into starting it," Sebastian continues, leaning back against the stairs he's sitting on and staring up at the sky, Blaine's body immediately tense. No one knows these things, no one outside of their family and potentially other hunters who had been around at the time – but Sebastian is much too young for that. "Heard that your angel daddy nearly lost everything just for your hunter daddy," he smirks, Rachel stepping on the front porch and looking as if she's about to scold Sebastian for smoking, surely about to go into a tirade about cancer and the effects it has on your health, but Sebastian doesn't seem to notice her and he continues, her mouth falling open as her eyes search for Blaine. "How your poor, poor uncle was thrown into Hell with Lucifer and Michael, how it drained poor Castiel of almost everything he had in him to raise him out – just for Dean."

"What are you talking about?" Blaine repeats, because he only knows bits and pieces of the story from what Bobby's told him, but he has the nauseating feeling that Sebastian knows so much more.

"It's kind of funny, isn't it? Like father like son, falling for the only person in your care because you're too emotionally fucked up to realize how wrong it is."

Blaine wants to storm across the small space between them, connect his fist into Sebastian's face, but Rachel lets out some sort of strangled squeak and Sebastian finally notices that she's arrived, turning and smiling brightly at her. "Ready to go, pretty girl?"

Blaine watches her closely as her mouth falls open, her eyes searching for Blaine's and he doesn't know what to tell her. He's failing her, because without finding out more about Sebastian he can't understand why Sebastian knows as much as he does.

"No," she says quietly, the sound barely carrying to where Blaine is still leaning against the Camaro, shaking her head. "No, what were you talking to Blaine about?"

"Just family business," Sebastian says and his smirk is so deeply ingrained into his face that Blaine wonders if he knows how to not look like an asshole at all times. "Nothing you need to worry about."

"Blaine's my family," she says, crossing her arms over her chest. "And he tells me everything so – just tell me what it is you two were talking about."

Sebastian looks like he wants to say something, to argue the statement, but Blaine just nods. Of course he'll tell her, he'd tell her anything she ever wanted to know.

"He was talking about Dean and Cas," Blaine finally says, keeping his focus on Rachel and not the snort that escapes Sebastian. "And Bobby. And Sam. And everything that happened."

"But-"

"He's not supposed to know about any of that, I know," he nods, watching as Rachel's expression becomes more guarded.

"How?" she asks him, and Sebastian has the audacity to shrug, jumping off the porch and heading towards his car.

"Stick around pretty girl, there's a lot here your darling brother can't tell you."

_**girl you gotta love your man  
take him by the hand, make him understand  
the world on you depends, our life will never end**_

Blaine goes to work almost immediately. He pulls out books from Bobby's shelf, much to the older mans dismay, scours the internet late at night but nothing sticks.

The problem is Sebastian himself. He displays no specific supernatural traits, nothing had tipped him off except for the fact that he just knows too much. Blaine realizes he could be just like them – a child of a hunter – but there was something in his demeanor that shot down that theory as quickly as it arises.

The best Blaine can come up with is 'shapeshifter', but even that doesn't work. Blaine can see that Sebastian has been living in the area for his entire life, his birth certificate filed away in town hall just like everyone else's, and while there's still the chance that the real Sebastian Smythe lay dead in a shallow grave somewhere and some mythological creature is portraying him, he's heard enough about his reputation to know that Sebastian has acted like a conceited, selfish brat since day one.

The bottom line is, Blaine doesn't feel like he's something evil. He's a pain in the ass and obnoxious, and Blaine would like to snap his neck in half, but he doesn't have the vibe that screams 'monster' like so much else in the world does.

He tries to grill Rachel for hints, for anything that might seem off about Sebastian but her words aren't helpful to him at all. It almost seems like she's trying to work her way under his skin, a tactic he hates to admit works surprisingly well when she says they don't exactly do a lot of talking. It takes him far too long to stop seeing red, to stop picturing the lanky lacrosse player defiling his baby sister, his _Rachel_, and by the time he's ready to question her more she's off in her own world of college websites.

He has to come to terms with the fact that he's going to have to ask Sebastian straight out, but that gives him little to no comfort. He doesn't think he'll believe a word out of the others mouth regardless of what he's told; he could confirm being a shapeshifter or a demon or even a vampire and prove it to him in spades and Blaine would still think Sebastian was just trying to get on his nerves again.

Blaine finds his opportunity three days after their confrontation in the front yard, Sebastian leaning against the kitchen counter drinking a water while Rachel disappears up to her room for something. She had shrugged when Blaine told her to stop seeing him, that he was potentially someone who could hurt not only her but the rest of her family, retorting that she had had someone that wouldn't and they only hurt her worse in the long run.

Her sharp tone stings more than he'd have liked to admit to, but the fact that she's still hung up on the situation at hand gives him a flicker of hope he knows he shouldn't have – he let her go, and he's supposed to have moved on by now.

He doesn't think he'll ever fully let her go, something he thinks Sebastian is planning on using to his advantage when Blaine walks into the kitchen.

"I see you're still here," Blaine mutters, moving past him and glancing warily towards the doors towards the library – Bobby left the previous night to help Cas and Dean with whatever it was they were after, and if something is to happen Blaine's going to have to take Sebastian on all on his own.

"You haven't even tried getting rid of me yet, Winchester," Sebastian smirks as he sips his water, his hand smoothing down the fabric of his polo.

"If I thought I could get you to disappear, I would do it in a heartbeat," Blaine retorts, clenching his fists lightly. He should disappear into the basement, he knows, work out his frustration and aggression towards the punching bag he had set up down there, but he needs to figure out more about Sebastian and that, unfortunately, means spending time with him.

"I see you're smart enough to know that this goes beyond fucking your sweet, innocent little sister," Sebastian grins, laughing a bit as Blaine shoots him a glare. "Though, I suppose 'innocent' doesn't really describe her, does it? Not if she's been fucking you for the past two years, at least."

Sebastian doesn't even duck as Blaine sends a fist flying towards his face, the two only breaking apart from their fighting when Dean's voice yells over the commotion of flying limbs and Rachel's scream makes Blaine go limp completely, allowing his father to pull him away.

"What did we tell you?" Dean barks, gently throwing Blaine to the side where he can collect himself, wiping his face clean from the sheen of sweat and blood from where Sebastian managed to get a fist into his jaw, Sebastian being held at the opposite side of the room by Cas.

"He was being a dick!" Blaine finally spits out. "If you heard what he was saying about Rachel-"

"I don't care _what _he was saying about Rachel!" Dean argues, the girl in question hiding herself against the wall as she looks between the two boys who had just fought over her. "We told you to back off of him!"

"He knows things!" Blaine shouts, loudly and he wants to run across the room and punch the self-satisfying smirk off of Sebastian's face but Rachel's hand wraps around his wrist and he manages to calm himself down slightly. "He knows things that he shouldn't know, things _Rachel and I _don't even know, about you and Cas and Sam and Bobby and-"

"That's because he's fallen," Cas says somberly, Sebastian's smirk turning into a full-fledged grin.

"Fallen from what?" Blaine asks, but Rachel's gasp surprises him as she shakes her head.

"He's an angel," she whispers, looking up at him with wide eyes. "He's a fallen angel, like dad."

"That's impossible," Blaine scoffs, but Dean just pulls out a bottle of whiskey from the cabinets and motions for everyone to sit down, like he hadn't just walked in on his son trying to beat up his daughter's boyfriend.

"You know of me, then?" Sebastian asks as he moves, sitting next to Cas and for a moment Rachel hesitates but she ultimately moves to sit on Blaine's lap, brushing her fingers lightly over his skin to make sure he isn't too injured, Blaine looking smugly over in Sebastian's direction but the other is now too distracted to even care, though Blaine doesn't miss how Dean pours himself more alcohol into his glass.

"You fought in the first war," Cas says simply, and Dean rolls his eyes until Cas finally realizes he needs to expand. "You were one of the angels who helped try to stop breaking the seals, hunting down demons and sending them back to hell when you could so that we could stop the apocalypse from starting in the first place."

"Clearly, you were ineffective," Cas continues with a pointed look in Sam's direction where he and Bobby have entered the room, Sam looking slightly uncomfortable beside him. Rachel opens her mouth to ask something but Blaine simply squeezes her hip lightly, wanting to hear everything they'd been keeping quiet from them all these years. "And after that, I lost track of specific angels and their duties, having fallen myself in my attempts to help the Winchesters stop what they had unintentionally started."

"I chose to fall," Sebastian says quietly, and Blaine's taken aback by the small tone, but Cas merely nods in response.

"From what I've been told – which is not a lot, mind you, as my powers are extremely limited these days and most of my communication has been cut off with Heaven – you chose to fall when the apocalypse was headed off. With God still absent, and no one seeming to replace him, chaos ensued. My powers were restored long enough to help Sam out of the box in hell, with the help of a demon named Crowley but they were drained not too long after."

"You know the angels are pissed when they cut off your angel radio," Dean tries to joke, though his eyes are focused on where Rachel's head is hiding in the crook of Blaine's neck and if he has any self-preservation skills, he knows he should push her away, but even in the midst of one of the biggest revelations of their lives, he can't help but be grateful that she chose to come back to him at a time like this.

"They only communicate when we see them on missions now, yes, though they told us a young fallen might come for us," Cas agrees in his own way, taking in the way Sebastian's eyes widen at the statement. "Our story is far less important than yours is, right now, and more importantly why you would be looking for us."

"My story?" Sebastian asks, and Blaine fights the urge to roll his eyes. This is the moment Sebastian has more than likely been looking forward to, but Rachel hears his small scoff and squeezes his knee lightly under the table and he settles down.

"Yes," Dean says, his tone gruff as he pours himself more from the bottle of amber liquid. "Your story. Why you're harassing my children and making them angry enough to punch you in the face."

Sebastian smirks, glancing over at where Rachel and Blaine are seated now, shaking his head. "No offense, Dean, but your children hardly act like children should," he retorts, and now it's Dean's turn to look harshly at Sebastian.

"I suggest you get talking, son."

He takes a deep breath but eventually focuses back on Cas; almost like he's his beacon of light and guidance and Blaine supposes in a way he is. Castiel is the only angel Blaine's ever come across, and he's willing to bet from what little he's heard of them that he's one of the nicest, even if he can seem a little emotionally detached.

"From what I know, I was born and raised here. If that happened when I lost my grace, I'm not sure – it must have, but I've looked around the area up and down for the past three years and I can't find it anywhere. I don't think this is where it landed. I didn't even know what I was until a few years ago. I started having black outs, hearing things, the whole nine yards. An angel came to me and explained what was happening. The weird language I was hearing was Enochian – the language of angels. I was picking up on what Dean termed the angel radio."

Sebastian shrugs, rubbing the back of his neck and looking around the room as Sam frowns, Bobby drinking his own beer with a look that clearly demonstrated how little he seemed to care, Blaine rubbing his sisters back gently as she curls up on his lap to listen quietly.

"They told me that I had chosen to fall, helped restore some of my memory from before, and the rest I've pieced together." He glances over at Rachel and Blaine, and for a second he looks worried, his eyes narrowing in Sebastian's direction before he's turned away from them once more. "They're curious about them, you know."

"We know," Dean says sharply, Rachel sitting up in rapt attention as Blaine leans forward but no one wants to look at either of them anymore.

"You haven't answered why you came to us," Cas says instead, talking over Blaine as he tries to ask what they want to know about the two of them.

"Well, I would ask for help, but I've heard what happened with Anna," Sebastian smirks, Cas looking tense for the first time since they've arrived at the house and Dean slaps his hand on the table harshly before Cas covers it with his own to calm him.

"What is it you need?'

"I need to know where my grace is. I need to become an angel again."

"No," Cas says firmly, Rachel making a small noise of surprise on Blaine's lap, the first sign that she's been paying attention in what feels like hours.

"What do you mean, 'no'?" Sebastian asks, his tone hardening.

"It's safer for you to stay as you are," Dean says when Cas won't explain. "For the same reason that Rachel and Blaine have the anti-possession tattoos and the seal on their ribs so that angels can't find them."

"They're not looking for me," Sebastian argues, "not like they are them!"

"Even still," Sam pipes up finally, pushing off the counter and resting his hand on the back of Dean's chair. "It's starting again. Worse than before. It might not be so easy this time."

"What is?" Blaine finally demands, tired of being ignored even though he's sitting right there. This is his life too, especially if someone is after him and his sister, and the only reason he thinks they're allowing them to stay for this is because they'd refuse to leave.

"Another war," Cas says finally, looking over at the two of them as Rachel lets out a small whimper.

"And it's bigger, this time?" she asks quietly, Dean sighing as Sam nods his head.

"Much," Sam tells them. "Hunters are gathering in groups, teaming up for safety and they're not just joining each other. Angels are joining now, too, and people are coming up from the woodwork to help. It's a slower burn, this time – they need a new way to raise Lucifer from the cage, of course, but this is bigger than just a civil war in heaven."

"Monsters that we haven't had to deal with are coming up. We're trying our best to keep everything as quiet as possible, but we don't think that we can for long. Eventually it's going to be total chaos. The apocalypse that people fear of will be here, and we're not sure we can stop it this time."

Dean's words are quiet, spoken low and he's staring at his children to get them to understand. He's trying to protect them, to keep them safe from harm's way, but Blaine just feels the same protection Dean does.

As much as Dean and Cas are fighting to keep them safe, he knows that once he gets the chance he'll be on the front lines with them, fighting to keep Rachel safe as well.


	3. Part III

_**it's important to me, that you know you are free  
'cause i never want to make you change for me  
think of me  
you know that I'd be with you if i could  
i'll come around to see you once in a while  
or if i ever need a reason to smile  
& spend the night if you think i should**_

They refuse to tell either Rachel or Blaine why they're being sought after for. They're told to keep their heads down, go to school and worry about nothing else but getting their degree. Rachel takes their words to heart, and while she and Blaine fall into familiar patterns now that Sebastian's real motives to working his way into their lives has been made clear, Blaine knows she'll still leave when the time comes.

Sebastian, in his own way, becomes a part of their family too. Castiel takes him under his wing, trying to teach him all the things he'll need to know. Sebastian is determined to find his grace, "If there's a war coming I want to fight it," and Dean and Sam take it upon themselves to teach Blaine all they can. They're preparing for battle, a battle unlike anything they've ever seen, and Rachel occasionally watches over them when they're teaching him secrets they never wanted to have to unleash.

Bobby makes him practice shooting at targets, something Blaine finds himself able to do with relative ease, but when Rachel begrudgingly does so as well he's surprised at her perfect aim. "A force to be reckoned with," Sebastian winks, but her tolerance for him has almost completely evaporated with the deterioration of their relationship.

Blaine, on the other hand, starts to warm up to him. Now that Rachel is his once more, Blaine can appreciate Sebastian's snark and the flattery he seems to send both Winchesters now that they know about him. He's not sure if he'd call him a friend, per say, but Blaine has never had many of those in the first place. A comrade, he supposes, and as they end their junior year and head into summer, the two spend late nights working on building the Camaro into something that can withstand anything the upcoming war is going to throw at it.

Rachel lounges in her bathing suit trying to tan her already dark skin, filling out applications as a run through before she'll actually send them out come fall, all with one common factor: Manhattan. He tries to be supportive, laying on her bed at night and listening to her plans of auditions for schools he's never even thought of: Tisch at NYU; NYADA; Columbia or Julliard if she becomes desperate. Places that require the flawless GPA she's spent her life cultivating in spite of their rather disheveled upbringing, places that Blaine feels sick to his stomach with the knowledge that she'll get in.

She gently prods him with the questioning on when he'll figure out where he wants to apply, despite his adamant protests that it's not what he wants. Another four years of school isn't going to prepare him for what he knows he needs to be doing. As much as he'd love to have a normal life, the one she seems to crave with an intensity he rarely sees from her, it isn't in the cards for him. The stars have aligned, and he's destined to make sure Rachel is okay and until he's out there fighting for her safety alongside the rest of his family and Sebastian, he knows he'll never be truly comforted.

He'll never truly be happy.

He can only keep her quiet with small kisses, the kind that make her skin flush pink until they're a tangled mess of limbs and sweat and panting each other's names quietly, soaking in each other as much as possible because it's all coming to an end soon.

They only have a year left, and after 17 of them, it seems like far too little time.

"You're not going with her, are you?" Sebastian asks him quietly one afternoon as they take a break from polishing the new paint job, the black gleaming in the sun only a few feet away from where the Impala lays quiet.

"No," Blaine admits, the word hurting more than it should as he turns the neck of his beer bottle in his hand, Sebastian clucking his tongue as he watches Rachel stretch before rolling over onto her stomach, hiding her face from the late afternoon sun.

"Does she know that?"

Blaine nods before shrugging. "She won't accept it," he tells him. "Thinks that it'll just take the right college to get me excited about the possibility, the right location and the right career path."

"You're a fighter," Sebastian says. "You don't want to sit on the sidelines when you should be protecting those you love." He pauses for a moment, eying Rachel once more. "When you should be protecting her."

"I know that it seems wrong, and immoral, and all those other words people throw out when they figure out you're in love with your twin," Blaine explains, "but it's not just that she's the closest thing to get off with. She's-"

"Perfection," Sebastian says with a lift in his lips, a smirk quivering at the corner of them and Blaine rolls his eyes, even if he agrees.

"She's supposed to be mine," Blaine corrects instead. "Life just messed up and made us related."

Sebastian chuckles, downing his own beer and shaking his head. "The Winchesters just can't seem to help themselves," he says. "Codependency and falling in love with the one you shouldn't – it's almost like it runs through your veins."

Blaine can't exactly argue the statement if the hints of what happened in Dean and Sam's youths are true, and the longer Dean avoids saying anything to him about what's going on between him and Rachel once more, the more he's positive maybe Bobby's words aren't just suspicion.

It's like any discretion they grew up with has completely fallen away, Rachel going as far as to brush her lips against Blaine's with a small smile when she walks by him in the afternoon, Sebastian rolling his eyes as he cranks up Steve Miller Band and drums on the hood of the Camaro.

He knows as school starts up, Sebastian lounging on the hood of his own car waiting for the two of them when they roll up, that they have to be careful again. Sebastian may be used to them, Dean still shooting wary glances at them and Castiel doesn't seem to think anything was weird at all, but the rest of the world isn't going to be as okay with the nature of their relationship as their small family is.

Everything is different in the real world, outside of Bobby's house and the car lot they've spent so many hours in all summer long. Sally is convincing Rachel to join the school play with her while Sebastian manages to convince Blaine to join the glee club to give him something to take his mind off everything. He's not used to singing in front of others, but watching Rachel sing in front of an audience of more than just him or their fathers is something he's proud to witness. As he watches her on stage for _West Side Story_, the iconic role of Maria handed to her without question, he's in awe.

He wants to keep her for himself, wants to hide her away in the passenger side of the Camaro and drive across the country like they have for so long, but he can see it now, for the first time.

She'll get out, and she'll make it, and even if he had assumed so before, seeing it firsthand shocks him in a way he hadn't been prepared for.

Before he knows it, Christmas is arriving and shortly thereafter it's the last semester he'll ever be forced to sit in a classroom. He's anxious for it to end, of course, just like every other kid in his class is, but Rachel's acceptance letters start pouring in and suddenly it's not a choice of _if _she'll get to go but _where_.

Sebastian and Blaine sit down with her as she panics and paces up and down her bedroom, Sebastian watching with amusement as he throws a pillow in the air and Blaine watching with apprehension in case Rachel breaks down.

"NYU has Tisch, which is world-known and respected," she rants, picking up the acceptance letter from the university in question before she places it back down just to walk over to the other end of the room where the framed acceptance from NYADA hangs; her first college acceptance and only two weeks after her flawless audition to the college. "But NYADA has a smaller class size, it's tougher – it'll prepare me better for Broadway."

"You could always say 'fuck school' and come with us," Sebastian offers, but her responding glare quickly quiets him as she moves to curl up on Blaine's lap, Sebastian rolling his eyes as Blaine's hands automatically wind around her waist to hold her safely.

"What do you think I should do?"

He wants to tell her to run away with them, to yell at them for having the music too loud as they cross state lines at a speed that's frankly too dangerous for any of them while they live off of fast food and gas station snacks, her pursed lips softening only when he can lean over to kiss them while Sebastian jeers from the backseat.

"NYADA," he finally says quietly, her smile wide as she nods. It's the place she belongs, he knows.

Her home isn't always going to be with him.

As graduation arrives, Sebastian all but moves out of his own house. With Rachel permanently attached to Blaine's side in fear of their upcoming parting, Sebastian takes residence in Blaine's room while he stays in Rachel's, just as terrified at the prospect of losing her as she is of losing him, if not more. There's a definite end coming for them now, and it seems to hit her more and more every day. Her touches are harsher, needier, more demanding and she goes as far as racing across the yard if he's disappeared to master his hunting techniques for a day, jumping into his arms and kissing him even though their fathers are passing by and Sebastian stands only a few feet away.

Dean seemed to have completely given up on keeping his children apart, and Blaine didn't begin to question it. He wonders, sometimes, if their father assumed they'd run if he attempted to separate them again, and how long it would take before they did. They were safer under Bobby's roof than they would be on their own, but if they were forced apart earlier than necessary Blaine's sure they'd do whatever they can to keep their last few months together.

Sebastian and Castiel would sit on the porch late at night, discussing the history of angels and Sebastian's own past in particular. Blaine listened in with Rachel's head in his lap if only to be prepared – the war was gearing up, battle lines being drawn and in far off places, things were starting to kick up.

They would sit silently, his fingers running through her hair or interlocked with her own as Castiel told Sebastian about his own life. How in the previous war, he had been a warrior, a force to be reckoned withand how that had even transferred over to his current, fallen personality. How when it came down to it, demons fled when Sebastian was brought up and how he had simply been doing all he could to keep his brothers and sisters safe. He didn't care that Lucifer had been banished or if Michael planned on doing just about anything to stop his brother. Gabriel had turned his back on them because of the civil war that occurred before returning like a prodigal son to try and save the day, but Sebastian had simply fought to keep them all together. There was no other option; when a group as strong and powerful as they were wanted war, they got war.

It was fascinating, to hear about what had happened last time. The fallen warriors who had given their life for the sake of saving everyone else; Bobby brushing off a dusty old frame to show them a picture of the group that had gone to fight expecting for all to die, finding out about Ellen and Jo and Ash, though he had been long gone by the time the picture had been taken. To hear that it had been Dean, ultimately, that started it off when he was locked down in Hell before Cas raised him, that it ended with Sam when he tried to do the right thing by ridding the world of Lilith. That try as they might, 'Team Freewill' had the odds stacked against them even when they were at their most prepared. How Death and the other three Horsemen had been brought in, how it had ultimately been the last thing anyone expected – love – that saved the fate of the world, the fate of their father and the fate of mankind as it was known.

Above all, it gave Blaine the strength he needed at the end of the summer to accept that Rachel and he were truly separating. That she was going off to live her life, away from him, and as Sebastian and he packed the car with their duffle bags of clothes and more alcohol and junk food than would ever be considered healthy, their time had come to a head.

Their last night was spent far away from the rest of the world, no one saying a word as they snuck out to the same clearing in the woods that he had once broke her heart in, their words hushed with kisses and soft touches, the last they'd get for as long as their lives were parted from one another. It hurt, broke a piece of his heart, and even as they lay intertwined with one another, he could feel the tears fall from Rachel's eyes.

"I love you," he whispers almost silently, the words no louder than a breath as he wipes away a free tear from her face and she can only give him a half-smile before her lips curve into a frown again. "No matter what happens, Rachel, I'm always going to love you."

She doesn't say 'I love you' back, not then, instead waiting until their family is at the train station to drop her off and send her on her way, Blaine and Dean both unable to bear the thought of going into the city with her to help her move in. Dean, not wanting to see his little girl grow up; Blaine, unsure if he'd really let her go.

He doesn't cry as she kisses him goodbye, deep and hard and it's like she's trying to make sure he'll remember her, as if he could ever even think about forgetting, but her nails dig into his arm as she stands on her toes to whisper the words he'd never get enough of.

"I love you too."

_**i'm gonna buy me a ticket as far as i can,  
i ain't never comin' back  
i'm gonna take me that south-bound, all the way to Georgia now  
'til the train, it run out of track**_

It feels like the worst day of his life.

He refuses to cry, but she's crying and pleading for him to come with her. That they can get him someplace to stay, she can't do this without him. "Please, Blaine, we can start over, we can be us and no one has to know anything different, please," and he wants to give in.

He wants to run off with her to a place he has no desire for just to see her smile again because her eyes are giant and full of tears and his heart is breaking in two, and he knows the tears are staining the leather jacket she got for him for Christmas, to protect him on the cold nights on the road that he knows he has in store for him.

Ultimately, he has to walk away, biting back a sob he won't let escape and he's not sure who gets her on the train, whether it's Dean or Sebastian or Castiel, but he doesn't care because he can't watch it. He can't watch her go.

"You could wait for a person," Sebastian mutters as he climbs into the passenger side, the seat normally taken by Rachel and it's unsettling for Blaine to have someone else there. Even if he and Sebastian have formed some sort of friendship, even if they plan on traveling the country exactly as Dean and Sam and Cas all do; it should be Rachel.

"Just tell me where we're headed," Blaine tells the other boy in a dead voice, wanting to just put the car in gear and _go_.

"I have no idea," Sebastian says, resting his feet on the dashboard and Blaine tries not to picture very different long legs stretched across his car as he puts the Camaro in drive, putting as much distance between himself and New York as he can.

If he goes in the opposite direction, he won't be tempted to find her, to beg her to come back with him, to settle for a life in New York with her, to go anywhere just so he doesn't have to part from her.

He doesn't stop driving until they hit Washington, Sebastian not saying a word unless it's to sing along to the Doobie Brothers or Eric Clapton, his voice calming Blaine down as best as it possibly can considering he's used to a different, softer voice humming along next to him.

Outside of a single text, _I made it_, Rachel didn't call, didn't send any messages, and he knew this was what they had agreed on, that it was easier to give them space for a few days, but he missed her. His heart ached and he thought that the most logical thing would be to turn the car right around and hide away in New York, in her dorm room where she was probably living with some girl who would never understand all of Rachel's small quirks that so many others found obnoxious.

Sebastian was the first to bring her up, the night they arrived at a small lake near the edge of the country, the air thick and heavy in the late summer heat even in the forest they were hiding away in. Blaine had moved to sit on a cluster of rocks, hiding his face in his knees in a way he knew his sister did whenever she was upset, which only seemed to upset him more, his chest heaving with the effort of simply breathing.

"You've never been away from her before, have you?" he asks as he hands Blaine a beer, which Blaine takes greedily if only to numb the ache he couldn't otherwise.

"Not for more than a few days," Blaine answers honestly. "Once, a week, when we were in high school – she went to visit our mom."

"In New York," Sebastian clarifies, and Blaine nods, realizing Rachel must have informed him during their brief foray into dating.

"It's always New York," he whispers, his voice slightly hoarse with the realization that as much as he loves her, she loves New York just a smidgen more, and he'd never do anything to make her give that up.

They sit quietly, a comfortable silence falling over them as they drink before Sebastian disappears and starts blasting Elton John from the speakers of the Camaro, a small smile tugging the corner of Blaine's lips as Sebastian sings along dramatically. The peace of the small forest is disturbed by a soft rock ballad, Sebastian using the now empty beer bottle in his hand as a microphone before he's holding out a hand to Blaine, asking him to join in.

It makes him forget, for a minute, that Rachel isn't there. That she's off living a life he never wanted, and he can't help himself from singing along.

_Someone saved my life tonight. _

The life Blaine grew up knowing is gone, and he's drowning and Sebastian's hand is there to help pull him through. The only person he could let in that wasn't related to him reminds him of their goal-to find Sebastian's grace, to fight this war, to keep both their families safe from the harm that'll come over too many innocent lives no matter what they manage to do.

_Fly away, bye bye._

But for one night, they can afford to be young, to be stupid and drink far too much as Sebastian repeats the song over and over. They sing at the top of their lungs, and when Sebastian's lips crash against his own, Blaine's too drunk to push him off. It's different from Rachel, and he's never thought about being attracted to someone else, but Sebastian's hips mold nicely against his own and this was what they had agreed on.

She'd be free to fly, and he'd be stuck mourning after her.

He knows that Sebastian is trying to show him that he doesn't have to.

_**let's make the best of the situation**__**  
**__**before i finally go insane**__**  
**__**please don't say we'll never find a way**__**  
**__**& tell me all my loves in vain **_

For a little while, it's easier. Sebastian has no idea where his grace is, too well hidden for Cas to help when they asked him and aside from Dean's phone calls checking in on the two of them, he doesn't know what's happening in Rachel's life.

He tries to throw himself into Sebastian, but it's never going to be the same. His body can take away the physical ache for periods of time, but Sebastian's heart is never going to be the one his own yearns for.

For three months, they travel up and down the country, fighting when they have to and aiming with no real goal of what they're supposed to be getting accomplished. They check any place that Sebastian thinks may have been significant in his past life, before he fell; battles he fought in, brothers he lost, places he had never even been in. They come up empty handed at every turn, but Blaine refuses to lose grasp of their goal and Sebastian only becomes more determined each time they comb over a town and leave without anything more than a demon sent back to hell under their belt.

They spend their nights in small motels, drinking and laughing and fucking around, and Rachel never gets mentioned. Sebastian misses her, Blaine knows, in his own way. He's caught sight of Sebastian's phone on more than one occasion with Rachel's name at the top of his messages, and he hates that every time he starts typing on the touch screen Blaine is left with the assumption that as he sings along to Pink Floyd, Sebastian is talking to the person Blaine misses most.

Sebastian leaves him one night, off on his own after finding an angel that Blaine isn't sure he actually trusts but he can't have Sebastian around for what he wants to do. It's been too long since he's had no one within arm's length reach of him, and while he normally doesn't mind he needs privacy for a decision he isn't sure is the right one.

"Blaine," she breathes when she answers the phone, her voice quiet and there's something he can't quite place about it, but it's been so long since he's heard it outside of his dreams that he doesn't comment.

"I miss you," is the first thing he admits, his hand resting on his abdomen. "I know we said we wouldn't talk but-"

"I miss you too," she agrees, and he can almost see the bright smile growing on her face. "I've missed you so much, Blaine, I just didn't want to bother you and Seb said-"

"I don't want to talk about Seb," Blaine growls lightly, a small laugh falling from her end and he realizes she's slightly drunk. He knows it's a Friday, but Rachel rarely drank, and the urge to protect her surges through him before she's talking once more.

"I'd rather talk about you anyways," she concedes, a smile now appearing on his face.

"Life on the road is life on the road, Rach. Nothing too different from what we saw Dean and Cas do all those years."

"And nothing that brings you near New York?"

He hesitates, for a moment, before shaking his head. "No," he lies, because there are a few places on the east coast that Sebastian wants to check out. "Not yet." She's quiet, and he doesn't like the sound of that, so he chooses instead to bring the conversation around to her favorite subject; herself. "How's school?"

"Amazing," she bursts, immediately settling into a long-winded rant about her classes and professors and her roommate, about how she sits in Times Square and how she's met up with their mother a few more times but Shelby will ask about Blaine and her stomach will drop and she has to fight the urge to cry, so she doesn't see her often. How her roommate is quiet but nice, though her boyfriend is not. How there's a boy, a couple years older than her, who asked her out, but she's not ready just yet.

"I did come to a party with him, though," she admits quietly. "That's where I was when you called, at least."

It brings a pain in his chest but if he lifts his shirt even a little he knows there's a giant bruise from where Sebastian practically threw him against a dresser in some hotel in Idaho the previous night, that he's in no real position to tell her not to go for it.

"We said we had to move on," he reminds her, his voice breaking slightly as she argues with him.

"I don't want to!"

"Rach," he tries to say, but she's talking over him at a mile a minute and his heart breaks more and more with every word.

"I love _you_, Blaine, and no one else is ever going to love me like you do, why is that so hard to accept? Why do you have to push me away just because we aren't physically together anymore? I don't want Jesse or any of the guys here in the city. I want you."

_You can't have me anymore_. He said the words, once upon a time, and they nearly broke both of them in two, fractured them so harshly he wasn't sure they'd ever come together again, and he doesn't think he can handle going through that again. He doesn't want to leave her behind, wants her as his own.

The guilt of what he's started with Sebastian weighs heavy in his gut and he knows her opinion of him will change once he tells her, even if she fell into Sebastian's trap once before. It's different now, because they both freely admit how much they love one another-and he'll still fall into bed with Sebastian when the day is done anyways.

"I want you too," he says instead, the guilt trying to claw its way out of his stomach but she's making a noise of contentment that he misses hearing as she curls into his side, and he's taken by surprise when her voice takes on an almost husky voice, one that stirs up feelings completely unrelated to love as she asks him just how much. He clears his throat, trying to figure out if she's really doing this – if his sister is really trying to initiate _phone sex _of all things, but before she can panic he chokes out a nearly silent, "pretty damn badly."

"I've missed falling asleep next to you," she continues softly once his words seem to promote confidence in what she's doing. He wonders where she is, if she's stumbled her way home since they started talking, and if she has the room to herself. "Like we did all summer."

He grins a little, remembering how they'd fallen asleep without clothes present more often than not, using the hot, dry weather as an excuse just to keep touching each other a little bit longer. "I miss that too," he whispers back, "Miss getting to hold you."

"I wish you could hold me now," she mumbles, and it's almost enough to make him get the keys to the Camaro and drive straight through until he's landed on 44th in midtown Manhattan, but he licks his lips instead and pushes her lightly in the direction he suspects she wants to go.

"Really? Just hold you?" She laughs lightly, and he can picture the faint blush that crosses over her skin whenever he gets too bold for her, the crimson coloring her tan. "Because I'm sure there are some other things I wouldn't mind repeating from this summer."

"Like what?" she asks, and he smirks, realizing that while she may have started it in her own way, she needs him to continue it. As confident and brash as she appears to the rest of the world, she's still just an 18 year old girl who needs to have reminders that she's wanted, that she's beautiful and to Blaine, that she's still his whole world.

"Like that time we snuck down to the lake," he says quietly, Rachel humming on the other end of the phone. "And you insisted on wearing that bathing suit that's basically nonexistent even though it was just the two of us, and I just tore it off of you anyways."

"My top is probably still swimming in that water," she giggles, though her voice is slightly higher and he knows she's remembering it too. How they had spent the day laughing and running around, how he had chased her into the water and when it got too deep for her to stand how he had simply wrapped her legs around his waist and taken her, how the moans she had allowed to fall from her lips had echoed around them in the empty area.

"I'm surprised you were able to find the bottoms to your suit," he grins, Rachel laughing louder in return.

"No thanks to you," she retorts, but he can only shrug on his end of the line.

"I can't help it that you're irresistible," Blaine murmurs, "and that clothing just takes up time I could be using to actually get you off instead."

She doesn't say anything in return, the mood changing quickly from light hearted joking back to their original intent with no timing at all. She lets out a small sigh, though, one that means she's fiddling with the soft curls in her hair and chewing on her lip.

"Do you want to know what I'd really do if I were there?" he asks after a moment, and she seems to sense his tone enough to consent quietly, a soft 'hmm?' and nothing more. "I'd take my time," he whispers, closing his eyes and imagining he was there with her. "Kiss you, of course, sliding my tongue gently across yours for a few minutes until you wrap your hands in my hair to drag me in deeper to your mouth."

She makes a small noise, almost like a hum but a little throatier, and he grins as his hand stays on his stomach if only to make this last longer for her. "My hands would tangle in your hair until I couldn't help myself, and I'd have to let one slide underneath your shirt," he continues, closing his eyes as he pictures the very thing he said, something he'd done hundreds of times before. The only difference is that they're on opposite ends of the country now, and this – the dirty talk, saying it all aloud, this is new for them both.

"I'm not wearing a bra," she whispers, and he groans at the mental image. How he could easily cup her breast and run his thumb over her pert nipple while she arched lightly into his touch, his tongue trailing over the shell of her ear, and he manages to tell her everything he pictures.

"My other hand would have to lift your shirt up, so that I could trace my tongue down your sternum," he whispers, and her breathing seems to hitch in her throat on the other end of the phone. "My hands would grip your hips tight, and I'd let my tongue flick inside your navel for a second just to watch your squirm," he grins, picturing just how she'd glare down at him for teasing her even as his hands would move to part her thighs for himself.

"I hate when you do that," she groans, exasperated but he lets out a small laugh anyways.

"No you don't," he contradicts, "because when I slide my hand between your legs, you're always wet for me."

"Blaine," she says, and he can hear her shudder from the other end of the phone line, pride washing over him that even from this far away he can still do that to her.

"I could just run my thumb over your clit," he finally continues, taking his own deep breath to steady himself as he finally lets his hand fall to the buckle on his belt, undoing it slowly as he licks his lips again. "Maybe slide just one finger inside you until you're begging me for something more, because it's not enough for you, is it Rach?"

"No," she gasps, and he squeezes the base of his cock at the thought of her spread across her dorm bed, having to do to herself what she needs him there for.

"You need my tongue, don't you?" he asks, and her whine in response causes him to slide his hand once over himself, closing his eyes. "You need me to dig into your thighs with my hands in order to settle between your legs, to flatten my tongue as I let it slide across you, tasting just how wet you are for me," he can practically taste her now, his tongue heavy with the absence of her on it. "Wrap it around your clit and pull it into my mouth until your hands rake through my hair."

She whispers his name, barely intelligible but he understands. She wants him, badly, and he wants her just as bad. It's torture, of the sweetest kind, to hear her panting quietly while he tucks the phone between his ear and his shoulder to make himself more comfortable on the bed. "I don't want you to come just yet, though," he says after a moment, and she whines on her end, "I want to be inside you when you do. I want to push into you and feel how hot and wet and tight you are around my dick, Rach, how you squeeze so tightly around me when I slam into you."

"Close, Blaine," she whispers, and it's the words she'd say if he was doing what he wanted to be doing, holding her hands above her head and letting nothing but their hips slide into one another hard and fast, her legs wrapping themselves around his waist and it's all he can do to keep himself in the present, his hand flying over his dick in a way it hasn't in years because he's always had Rachel there, Rachel and her hand and her mouth and her cunt sliding down on top of him and now she's so far away from him.

He doesn't know if he wants to come or if he wants to cry, but her soft moan of his name lets him do the former until he's lying on a dirty hotel bed with come soaking into the skin of his stomach with his sister murmuring her gratitude on the other end of the phone.

"I still love you," she tells him, and he hums in agreement.

"I'll always love you," he promises.

_**what does it matter to ya  
when you got a job to do  
you gotta do it well  
you gotta give the other fellow hell**_

They fall into a pattern. One will call when Sebastian is out, though Blaine still can't bring it in himself to tell her what he's doing with Sebastian the nights they can't talk. He can't find the words that will break her heart; while they're not necessarily together, she's turning down dates from several of her classmates and for the first time in his entire life he wonders if maybe she does love him more than he knows.

If, somehow, she loves him more than he loves her.

But he'll literally fight to the death for her, and as war breaks out after their first Christmas apart, he realizes he may have to.

His attachment to her is dangerous, but he tells her to watch out for everything she possibly can. Dean has to call them both back to Bobby's the summer after her freshman year, much to her distress and pleasure at being able to see Blaine again, the two attached at the hip from the time her plane arrives at the airport until he has to drive her back to New York, taking it upon himself to do so.

"We need to tell you everything," Cas says, sitting them down at the kitchen table while Sam slides down the wall, arm in a sling and Bobby downs even more alcohol than before. "We tried to keep you out of it for as long as possible, in hopes that we could keep you safer but-"

"They're coming for you regardless, at this point. And in sources you'd never expect," Dean cuts him off, his tone broken down and Blaine feels a sympathy run through him for his father, who had never expected to take part in one war, much less two. He wonders if they can all be as successful as they were the last time.

"Who is?" Rachel asks quietly, her hand tightly wound around Blaine as she sits on his lap, no one in the room even remotely fazed anymore.

Cas looks to Dean, and his voice is almost monotone as he begins to explain the entirety of what's happening. How with Michael and Lucifer locked in the cage, stuck in Hell with no one but demons for company, they had begun to be coerced and manipulated into taking sides. How Michael had, at this point, essentially fallen just as much as Lucifer, as Sebastian had done and Anna before him, how Castiel had been forced to time and time again.

The older demons, the ones who would forever be on Lucifer's side – they were all locked up, in cages of their own from the less powerful but far more numerous ones who had somehow come to join Michael on his side, with what Cas could only express was false promise of freedom if they got Michael out of the cage.

"Aren't they already free?" Rachel asks quietly, "They're here all the time, possessing and killing."

"They're under orders," Sam explains. "There's still a hierarchy that they have to obey, but Michael is offering them chaos. The ability to go and destroy without order and without repercussion."

"The only thing stopping this from happening is that Michael is still trapped in the cage, for now," Dean continues, his gaze falling on Rachel and Blaine thinks his heart might stop with how defeated their father looks. "But if they can get Rachel, they can get him out."

"They won't get me," she shoots off, anger and defiance flaring off of her like venom as she sits up straighter on Blaine's lap. "I'm not stupid enough to fall into their traps."

"They're good, Rachel," Sam says. "They manipulate you into believing you're doing the right thing, that they're not who they really are. They'll come and possess those closest to you, if they can, they'll befriend you and let you fall in love with those under their control. And then, when you trust them completely, they'll send you on the mission they need you to complete, all without you really realizing what's going on."

She's quiet at those words, something hitting close to home inside her he can tell but Sam continues on as if he hadn't paused. "You got out, Rachel. And every single one of us in here is so proud of you. I don't think there's a single one of us that wants you back here, right now, having to hear all this. We just want to try and make sure you can stay out."

"Why me?" she asks, her tone sharp. "Why not Blaine, or any other person in the world?"

"You're a Winchester," Dean says with a sigh. "It's outlined in the stars, or some bullshit like that."

"They want Blaine as well," Cas says shortly with a glare in Dean's direction. "Michael, actually, needs Blaine. It's Lucifer, really, who needs you. You're the only one who can open that cage, and while Michael wants out, he doesn't want Lucifer out. He's willing to sacrifice himself to keep Lucifer in."

"Me?" Blaine asks, shocked. He's not anything special, never has been, not like Rachel. As terrifying an option as it is, he can understand why she'd be chosen to be something of importance. She's always shone a little brighter, been a little more everything when it comes down to it, and it makes sense to him that she's the key to something, even if it's a horrifying something.

"The two of you are a pair," Bobby explains. "Not just in that you're twins, or that you love each other more than all else. But you're interwoven deeper than that. One of you can't live without the other, and vice versa. One is light, one is dark. It's more of a spiritual thing than a supernatural one, and we've suspected it for years. Even Dean and Sam weren't as closely intertwined as you two are."

"We don't know if there's a legitimate _thing _for what you two are," Dean says after a moment once he finishes glaring at Bobby. "But given who you are and what you've been surrounded by and your apparent destinies, we're laying money that there's some sort of aspect to you that isn't exactly purely natural."

Rachel's eyes open wide, but she nods regardless. "So Michael wants Blaine," she says to clarify, "and Lucifer wants me."

"Lucky you," Sam smirks from his position against the wall.

"We tried keeping it from you in hopes that nothing would come of it, but the truth of the matter is that the war is just barely getting started. Demons are flying out of hell faster than we can even imagine, and they're bringing up creatures we haven't dealt with before as well as a shit ton more than we're used to of the ones we have." Dean takes a deep breath, shaking his head. "From what we've figured, they're hoping that Lucifer is counting on the carnage from a more destructive battlefield to win him favor and strength, while Michael attempts to trap earthbound demons from coming back."

"But you don't know for sure?"

"Without talking to Lucifer or Michael, I don't think anyone knows for sure," Dean admits.

Sebastian crosses his legs as he leans against the counter, staring over at Blaine. "We need to find my grace," he says, "and fast. I know you wanted to spend the summer with Rachel, but I'm not going to sit around and wait while my family is killing each other and while it can potentially tear your family apart."

"I'll come with," Rachel offers, looking at Blaine. "For the summer, at least, until I have to be back in New York for school."

He wants to say that it's too dangerous, but they're nearing 19 now and he'll never tell her 'no'.

_**it's so hard to keep this smile from my face  
losing control, yeah i'm all over the place  
clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right  
here i am, stuck in the middle with you**_

Life on the road is a lot different when he actually has Rachel next to him. Sebastian complains even more than normal, if that's possible, but Rachel's determination and drive work well when they're up against demons. They seem to come from nowhere, almost like Rachel's drawing them closer, and he realizes that she might be, unintentionally.

Because they want her, and every single one makes it a point to tell her. They tell her the things they could bring her; fame, fortune, her name in lights and a normal life where she doesn't have to be a part of all of this. Sometimes he worries that she'll waver, even slightly, and that they'll take advantage.

But she'll look over at Blaine, smirking lightly before she recites the Latin exorcism she learned in a day flat, before taking his hand and kissing him lightly. "Normal was never in the cards for me," she murmurs, and he can't help but feel a little relieved that she's still willing to deal with the horrible war just to be on Blaine's side, even if only for a couple months.

"It's the Fourth of July," Sebastian tells them one sunny afternoon as they drive through Nebraska. "Maybe we should take the day off, or something."

"There is no day off," Rachel says in response, flipping through the journal Dean passed on to them before they left, the very same Dean showed Blaine a few years prior. "War doesn't exactly stop, Seb."

"No, but you two are only going to live once. Don't you want _some _happy memories to take with you when you're up against these things?"

Blaine looks over at Rachel, letting her know the decision is in her hand. As much as he wants to continue on their way to Montana to find out why 4 people have gone missing within a 3 day range, and more importantly why no one is questioning it, he wants to be able to enjoy what little time the two of them have before she leaves again.

"Fine," she relents, rolling her eyes, "we can stop somewhere."

But there's a smile on her face, and Sebastian makes quick work of finding a small camping area not too far away from them. They buy food to grill out, Sebastian disappearing for a little while with a grin in Blaine's direction when he returns to the car, Rachel sitting impatiently on the hood and baking in the sun while they wait for him.

There's a small lake, the same as so many others they've seen across the country, and the sun is so hot none of them can be bothered to wear much more than their bathing suits anyways. Blaine feels a protective surge of _mine_ as Sebastian lathers sunscreen on Rachel's back, though she just flips her sunglasses over her eyes as she glances out at the water.

"Seems like someone wants to go in," he teases quietly as she waves him over to spread the white lotion over his skin, though he didn't really care one way or another if he had protection on or not. The sun isn't going to be what kills him, he knows. He won't live that long.

"Absolutely not," she scoffs, Sebastian turning the music on – Zeppelin, of course, blasting from the speakers suddenly as she smirks up at him. "You're never going to let go of dad's old cassette collection, are you?"

"Now, why would I do a thing like that?" he teases, wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her close to him. "You can keep your Lady Gaga, I'm quite content with Robert Plants voice, myself."

"Is that so?" she murmurs, her hands winding around his neck as she slides her lips against his own for a moment before Sebastian's behind her, grabbing her and pulling her away from Blaine. He only laughs, watching as she tries to kick him into letting her go, screaming his name loudly in the empty campgrounds.

"You're already in a bathing suit, Rach," Sebastian says, keeping his hold firm on her as he leads her into the water, Blaine trailing after them, "And it's at least a hundred degrees outside. Don't you want to get wet?"

"How come every word out of your mouth sounds like a come on?" she retorts, still trying to worm her way out of his arms as they reach the edge of the lake.

"Probably because it is," Blaine answers for Sebastian, who merely smirks in agreement before dragging her into the water, Blaine diving in and swimming further out to where Rachel gets casually tossed, indignation covering her features as she surfaces from the water.

"This is disgusting," she yells, Sebastian laughing as he floats along, kicking his feet, "I hate you, Sebastian."

"No you don't," Sebastian shrugs, though Blaine thinks she might actually sometimes.

"Hey," Blaine says, pulling her to him and she pouts but lets her legs wind around his waist in the water, Blaine supporting her in the reasonably shallow lake. "It's not so bad, is it?"

"I don't even want to _think _about the bacteria swimming over my skin right now," she shudders, Blaine kissing her nose to keep her calm as he smiles.

"But think about how nice it is to be cool and relaxed for once," he points out, and she stops her pouting as Sebastian swims in circles around them.

"I suppose that's true," she mutters, eying Sebastian carefully. "Though I'm still not sure I appreciated that I didn't have a choice in the matter."

"You're welcome," Sebastian sings, splashing her with water and causing her to glare at him once more. Blaine wonders how the two of them could have ever thought they could get away with dating, really, when they bicker more often than not.

The three of them float in the lake until their skin is pruning, Rachel wringing her hair out as she steps onto dry land and Sebastian immediately goes to set up a small grill they carry with them for nights like this, the evening drawing closer as the sun begins to set in the distance. He makes himself content with grilling while Blaine pulls out a sweatshirt for Rachel to slide into, her long legs bare underneath it, but her kiss placed just under his ear is even more distracting than that as his fingers flex into her hips.

"Can you two go one night, please, I am right here and even I'm not _that _crazy on voyeurism," Sebastian calls, sliding food onto a plate and handing it off to Rachel as she smacks him in the back of his head.

"I think we all know that's a lie," Blaine jokes, sitting down next to Sebastian as the three of them eat quietly. It's a nice change of pace; for once the three of them aren't worrying about life and death, they're not searching fruitlessly for Sebastian's grace and coming up short, they're not watching Rachel kick more ass than they'd expect only to be reminded that she's only with them for another six weeks before she returns to her own life.

They're a bunch of 18 year olds, enjoying their fourth of July with their friends, almost like they can be normal for a few moments.

It's Rachel who starts the food fight, flicking a piece of her macaroni salad in Sebastian's direction when he isn't looking, and from there it only escalates until she's being thrown back into the lake, sweatshirt and all, her scream loud enough to scare off a group of birds in the trees around them as Sebastian chases her around. She hides behind Blaine when she can, but he's covered in what he can only hope is ketchup and he has no problem with wrapping his arms around her to lift her over his shoulder, Sebastian cheering as he leads her into the lake, kicking and screaming and laughing the entire time.

Sebastian makes amends by tossing her a package of sprinklers once she's relatively dry once more, wrapped up in sweats that Blaine suspects she stole from his bag instead of her own, a grin on her face as Blaine fishes out lighters from the car.

"Happy Fourth of July," she whispers, kissing his cheek before she lights two sparklers for them, Sebastian setting up bigger fireworks at the edge of the lake before rejoining them. Rachel's free hand is intertwined with his own, and Sebastian wraps an arm around her waist as she rests her head on his shoulders, and Blaine can't remember the last time he was so content.

A brother, a sister, and their own fallen angel.

It's the best holiday Blaine will have ever spent.


	4. Part IV

_**forgive me for what i told you  
my heart makes a fool of me  
you know i'll never hold you  
i know that you gotta be free**_

It's too soon that they're leaving Rachel in New York once more, Blaine venturing inside the city and Sebastian rolls his eyes before wandering off as he gives them a moment to say goodbye. Rachel's brown eyes are shiny with tears, giant and wide and Blaine wipes one that falls away with his thumb, kissing her forehead before he has to turn and walk away or he never will.

He never told her about what Sebastian and he do when she's not around, when she's living her life in New York, and the guilt he managed to push aside all summer comes swarming back in droves as Rachel starts her sophomore year in college.

He hears more about Jesse St. James; a senior who Blaine knows has had an eye on his sister since the year previous. Now that she's got a supporting role in the musical the school is putting on for the winter fundraiser, she sees him almost constantly and while she laughs when she says that he asked her out again, Blaine wonders if maybe it's time.

He's starting to see how bad their connection is, if only because of all the demons that seem to bring her up constantly. He wasn't quick enough, one day, got himself trapped and before Sebastian could swoop in to save him, he's being told how badly they want Rachel, just what they'd do to get to her and all the horrible ways they can manipulate her. How they can use him to get her, or vice versa, and he knows it's true. He knows that the second they capture Rachel, he'll go in fighting to whatever end it means, and he knows that if they get him, she'll give up her life that she's trying so hard to build to save him.

Over her Christmas break, they meet in South Dakota, Bobby's house relatively empty with Dean, Cas and Sam all fighting one case and Sebastian traveling to Maine on a wild goose chase for his grace still.

She knows something is off the second she walks in the door, he can tell by how her face falls and she doesn't immediately run to him. Somehow, even in just calling her to meet him, she's figured something is off, and her face is wary and closed in a way he never wanted to see aimed in his direction.

"Don't do this," she says quietly, and he can't look at her while he admits his misgivings, while he tells her all the ways he's fucked up. He has to let it out, he knows, has to tell her how even so little as three nights ago it was Sebastian's hand wrapped around him getting him off, and as he tries to pour out how sorry he is, how he had no idea how it got this far, how it was still only she who he loved, she slaps him hard across the face.

It's less than he deserves, and she storms up the stairs and slams the door to the room she's learned to call her own hard, Blaine sinking down to the floor in the main hallway and staring up at the ceiling.

"I'm sorry," he whispers once more, but he knows she can't hear him, that he's broken them for good this time, that there may never be a time he gets even his sister back, much less the love of his life.

She doesn't speak to him, leaves the next morning without a word between them, and this is the worst time they've parted. He watches her go, watches her disappear and when Sebastian tries to distract him two days later, Blaine sighs in disgust before pushing him away.

He never wanted Sebastian, no more than Sebastian really wanted Blaine. Sebastian wants his grace, wants his power and wants to go back to defending his family. Blaine wants Rachel.

_**did she make you cry, make you break down, shatter your illusions of love  
is it over now, do you know how  
pick up the pieces and go home **_

He spends another year with Sebastian in his passenger seat before they find his grace, lodged in a giant willow tree in the heart of Georgia. The change is immediate, Dean and Cas on either side of him as Sebastian regains his powers and his angelic title, everything changing all at once.

"I have to go back to the garrison," Seb tells him that night. They haven't fooled around in almost 14 months, but somehow the fact that Sebastian's leaving him weighs heavy in Blaine's heart and he captures the other in a soft kiss, sweet and gentle and nothing like they've ever done before.

"Take care of yourself," Blaine whispers, and Sebastian just nods, looking guiltily down at his feet.

"Take care of Rachel."

It's the last thing he says before he disappears, and Blaine's not sure if or when he'll find him again. Suddenly he's alone, completely and totally, and for six months his heart isn't nearly as into fighting the war as it should be. He nearly gets caught by a demon whose name Blaine doesn't want to know, the familiarity of the evil figure enough to cause a fire under his feet and run as fast as he can in the opposite direction. Whoever it is is after him for one specific reason-to get to Rachel-and Blaine's not sure he's strong enough to fight it on his own.

He needs someone by his side, and Dean offers to let Blaine accompany him and Cas, Sam even saying there's always a spot with him, but Blaine's not a child anymore. He's going on 22 and he wants to fight his own battles, as stubborn and stupid and reckless as it makes him.

Rachel hasn't spoken to him in two and a half years, not since the day he told her all the things he did with Sebastian in various motels across America, and every single day that passes by he draws closer and closer to Manhattan.

It isn't really intentional, he tries to tell himself as he makes his way through the city, he just wants to check up on her. Make sure she's safe, being careful, not disregarding everything she's been told just because he broke her heart.

He ends up finding her accidentally at a bar in one of the grittier parts of town, a place he had escaped to just to drink a beer and try and forget the world for a moment. She has a group of girls with her, but her eyes connect with his even across the room and while her gaze is steely, she doesn't fly off the handle.

She also doesn't come over to him.

He watches her carefully, how she laughs and drinks with her friends before a cover band strikes up, the music seeming to carry him forward to her as she joins her friends on the dance floor to sway along.

She doesn't push him away when he walks up behind her, laying his hand gently on her hip, but she still won't look at him either. Blaine doesn't know if it's better to talk or to leave it be, so he just lets her lean against him, her ass grinding against him as they dance to the cover band that plays an old Fleetwood Mac song, one he's heard her sing thousands of times before in the backseat of the Impala while they were growing up, and she seems to understand as his hand tenses on her hip, thumb brushing over the bare skin exposed by her low riding jeans and shirt that seems to rise further up the longer they sway like that.

"I've missed you," he murmurs, quietly brushing hair away from her ear and she glances over at her group of friends, one of them staring a little too much for Blaine's taste but she turns to finally face him anyways, a hesitant look on her face.

"I have a boyfriend."

The words should stop him, and they cause him to grip her waist tighter but it's only to drag her closer until she's flush against his chest, his mouth nipping at her earlobe as he whispers "I don't care," into her ear, feeling her shiver lightly under his touch.

Her fingers grab hold of his shirt as she stands on her toes to kiss him, biting down on his lower lip and even if it's harsh, a small way for her to remind him that she's still mad and hurt by what he's done, it's almost like coming home to her. They push their way through the crowd until they've locked themselves in the small bathroom, Blaine pinning her hands above her head as he nips at her collarbone, not afraid to leave a mark because he doesn't care that someone else is doing this to her on a regular basis now.

She's still his, if the way her hips buck up to meet his is any indication, Blaine taking a minute to breathe before his tongue trails over the swell of her breast, his free hand moving between them to slide underneath her tight jeans, to slide his finger over her clit until he can push inside of her. She doesn't bring up having a boyfriend again, even as he unsnaps the button on her jeans to slide them down her hips enough to give himself room to work with, her wrists fighting against his hold until she could break free to get him out of his own clothing enough, her lips sucking hard on the skin of his neck. He knows he'll have a hickey in the morning, something she hasn't done to him since they were in high school and still trying to fumble their way through things, but her small hand wraps around him and starts to jerk him off and he can't bring himself to care.

There's nothing about this that they haven't done before, except the years of silence that preceded it, and for that reason they're even faster than normal, Blaine gripping her thighs to hold her up against the door as he pushes inside of her, her head slamming back against the wood as she lets out a small groan. It's instinct, to thrust into her quickly and to know exactly what angles get her off the quickest, the hardest, and it's only a few minutes before her nails are digging into his shoulders as she hisses out his name, the sound sweet to his ears as he buries himself as far inside of her as he can before coming himself.

She pushes him away after a few moments, disgust and pain crossing her features before she can hide them away, and Blaine immediately feels the way his heart clenches. This wasn't supposed to fix anything, of course, but it wasn't supposed to end harshly either.

"Can we please talk?"

"No," she snaps, pulling down her shirt to its proper length. "No, because you haven't tried to talk to me in over two years, Blaine, and you can't just come in and mess up my life now. You lost your chance."

"You were the one that left," He points out, following her out of the bathroom. "I wanted to apologize, to fix things, and you walked out of Bobby's."

She pauses only long enough to gather her coat and her bag, her friends eyeing the two of them carefully before she's brushing past him in an attempt to ignore his entire existence, and he can feel the annoyance under his skin.

"Don't walk away from me again, Rachel. You're 22 now, you don't have college to run away to, you can't-"

"You don't know what I have," she hisses as she whirls around on the deserted sidewalk. "You don't know anything, because you didn't chase after me when I left. You let me go, and you broke my heart, and you never once came after me. Until now. What, did Sebastian finally leave you?"

Her words sting, though he's not sure if it's because they're true or because she's blinking back tears. "A while ago," he admits, shaking his head. "But that's not – Rachel you _left_. If I thought you wanted me to follow you, I would have in a heartbeat."

"But you didn't," she says, her eyes narrowed. "You never did. You let me run off to New York on my own, let me walk out of Bobby's house because I was upset and hurt but I would have taken you back, and never once, in four years, have you shown up to fight for me. What are you even doing here?"

"Looking for you," he tells her quickly, but she scoffs as if she doesn't believe him. "I wanted – I didn't come because I don't want the city, Rach. But I want you and I _need_ you, out there with me. You're the only way we can win this war, you know."

"I don't care about a fucking _war_," she seethes, crowding in on his personal space. "I care about my heart, and my dreams. My dreams were never to fight demons and ghosts and things that go bump in the night. If you want to carry on the tradition our family seems to have – fine. But Uncle Sam said that I could stay out, that I had the potential to actually break this stupid curse the rest of you give into. And I'm going to."

"So you're never going to come back, then?" he asks quietly, and her face softens only momentarily before she's zipping up her coat and tightening it around herself, shaking her head.

"I'm going to go back to _my _apartment that I bought with money I _earned_," she states, Blaine ignoring her connotation at how he and their fathers get by, "with my _boyfriend_ that I am in love with."

"You don't love him," Blaine yells as she turns to walk away. She doesn't respond, continues heading towards a subway up the block, and Blaine knows he'll regret not chasing her now but he can't seem to move. "You don't," he repeats, the words quiet and hushed as she disappears underneath the city, to a life he can't ever begin to imagine.

He thinks it's the last time he might ever see her again.

_**i think of childhood friends & the dreams we had  
we lived happily forever, so the story goes  
but somehow we missed out on the pot of gold  
but we'll try best that we can to carry on**_

He drives for two weeks.

He doesn't have any set place to go, doesn't look for the signs he's become far too used to-freak electrical storms that aren't so freaky anymore in these times, mysterious disappearances or deaths in droves high enough for the police to stumble over excuses they'd make up to keep the truth quiet – just drives until he can't think anymore.

It's two weeks and three days since he's last seen Rachel that he stops in a bar in Mississippi, a brunette singing at the makeshift stage in the corner and her eyes are blue, and her voice isn't nearly as melodic, but she's good enough for that night.

And when three weeks afterward, he's making an excuse for the short blonde whose eyes are the color of chocolate who buys him a shot of tequila, he wonders if there's going to be a pattern to every girl.

If she'll somehow remind him of Rachel, in the end, when he's slinking back to the Camaro in shame and guilt weighs heavy in his chest.

This was never who he wanted to be. He loved and he lost and he wanted to love just the one, but she had walked away more times than he had. They had done this to each other, he knew, and there was no real hope for any sort of reconciliation.

So he spends his time fighting a war and trying to protect her even if she'll never know exactly what he does for her on a daily basis. That every demon who he tries to send back to Hell brings her up, threatens to whisk her away and he knows that had it not been for the tattoos their fathers imprinted on their skin at birth, she would have been possessed by now, following someone else's rules instead of her own sheer determination.

He checks in on her from a distance when he can, occasionally hearing from his fathers or the odd newspaper clipping he looks through. How quickly she rises in the harsh, cruel world of entertainment. Everyone loves her, her voice and her charisma and her talent and it's everything he knows she's always wanted.

Sometimes he wonders if there's a helping hand behind it all, one that even she doesn't know about, but without knowing specifics he'll never be able to figure out if his suspicions are true.

It's Sebastian, oddly enough, who tends to be his biggest resource for news. He pops in without warning, appearing in and out without so much as a 'hello' or 'goodbye'. He tells Blaine what's happening in the garrison, what he's heard about Rachel, what his fathers are up to. The life of a hunter is quiet and isolated and the only reason Sebastian is able to even track Blaine is through cell phones, something Dean doesn't trust-for good reason-but Blaine can't bear to have his one true link to the outside world cut off otherwise.

It's almost three years after he last saw Rachel that Sebastian appears in his car without warning, Blaine not even giving it a second guess as to how he had figured out where he was when he notices him, singing along quietly to the Styx song playing on the stereo.

"Jesus," Blaine mutters, shaking his head and trying to rid himself of the heart attack he was sure Sebastian had caused, turning down the music to hear whatever it is that Sebastian's here for now.

"Sebastian, actually, but I'll be sure to pass the message along that you say 'hello'," Sebastian retorts dryly, Blaine simply rolling his eyes before Sebastian tells him to park the car.

"We're on the middle of the highway, Seb. I can't exactly just stop."

"You need to," Sebastian says, and his voice is lacking the normal tone of humor that he's somehow managed to keep despite everything going on, and Blaine realizes that whatever he's here for – it's serious, in a way Blaine might not be prepared for.

It's dusk, the highway cutting through Indiana empty and the sun setting when Blaine pulls over, parking and the two sit on the trunk as Sebastian tells Blaine everything that he'd been trying to keep out.

How Michael was losing, how the Angels were losing, how close they were to getting Rachel. How the reason Blaine hadn't heard from Dean or Cas within the past two weeks is because they've been taken, captured, and Sebastian can't determine which side has them, but he's willing to bet the it's Lucifer's team.

They're closing in on his sister, and panic swells inside Blaine. She's vulnerable, a sitting duck with her name growing in fame-even if she's changed it, to a shorter surname that can fit on billboards and marquees, anything hunting her down knows.

'Berry' isn't going to hide the 'Winchester' flooding through her veins.

"What do I do?" he asks, hanging his head in his hands as he tries to envision a clear lit path, but there's nothing there. He has no idea if he should continue on his own, try and rescue his dads-how he might even do that in the first place.

He's 25 and just as confused as he was at 14, fumbling to his bedroom with his sisters legs hooked around his waist and her mouth fused to his, just as lost as he was at 18 wandering around the country with nothing but the angel sitting on the trunk of his car telling him his world is slowly coming to an end.

"She's your best bet."

"She doesn't want me," Blaine mutters, shame and embarrassment flushing his cheeks because Sebastian still knows how badly Blaine wants her. Even in their time apart, the doppelgangers and girls with talent that Rachel would scoff at don't fool anyone, they're never a real replacement for her.

"She's engaged," Sebastian whispers after a minute. "But the weird thing is, I've been unable to track him down. Every time I check up on her-without her knowing, of course, I don't think she'd be pleased to see me-he seems to disappear into thin air."

Blaine looks over at Sebastian, raising an eyebrow and Sebastian just rakes a hand through his hair before shrugging. "It's probably nothing," he tells Blaine, but his tone says otherwise.

"It's rarely nothing," Blaine argues, jumping off the hood of the car and before he can even ask Sebastian if he's coming with him, the angel is gone and disappeared into wherever he goes when he's not stalking Blaine, Blaine left on his own to put as little distance between Manhattan and himself as he possibly can.

_**maybe the reason i say these things, is to bring you back alive  
maybe i've fought this long & this hard, just to make sure you survive  
**_

The last thing he wants to do is come in and interrupt her life, after the last time went so horribly wrong.

He said he'd go and stay gone, and at the time he had meant it.

But if she's in danger, real imminent danger, he has to go and save her. She's the reason he's fighting in this war in the first place. He could care less if the angels want him or if the demons want him or what Dean and Cas and Bobby and Sam all say, he does what he does to keep her happy and safe.

The 13 hour drive between Camden, Indiana and Manhattan is done in just over 11 hours, Blaine wishing he could somehow get there even quicker. The sun is starting to rise over the tall buildings as he parks in a garage down the block from the address Sebastian left in his passenger seat, the apartment she shares with her fiancée in a nicer part of town and it almost pains him that he's going to try and take her away from her life.

He has ways to get into her building without notice, slipping up the four flights of stairs and unlocking the door to her apartment without a sound. The apartment is still, and for a minute he's thrown off-the Rachel he grew up with was awake at six in the morning, every day without fail and regardless of what time she went to bed the previous night. He had hated it in their teens, when he wanted to do nothing but lay in bed all day with her next to him, but it helped him now that he spent more time on the road than off it.

His senses are heightened from years of listening for every tiny movement, and when he hears the soft steps from his left, he's prepared for her to appear from around a corner. What he doesn't expect is for her to jump on his back and push him to the floor, holding him down by the neck while he tries to yell that it's only him.

"Blaine?" she squeaks out after a second, realization hitting her as she lets go of her hold even though her legs don't leave their spot on either side of his torso.

"Hello to you too," he responds in a monotone voice, turning his head to look at her. "The floor isn't exactly as comfortable as it was 10 years ago, can you let me up?"

"What the hell are you doing, lurking around my apartment at seven in the morning?" she whispers, her voice sharp as she stands up and helps him off the ground, giving him a second to take her in. How long her hair had gotten, his fingers tugging lightly on the ends of the dark curls before she swats them away, how steely her glare is even in the dim morning light streaming in through the small kitchen window.

"They're gone," he replies, and her eyebrows knit together in confusion for a moment before she's tugging at the bottom of her sweatshirt, the letters _NYADA _printed in a dark navy print across her chest and tugging at his heart when he thinks about how much he's missed her.

"They're always gone," she retorts, keeping her voice low. "They'll be back."

"They're _gone_, Rachel," Blaine says, raising an eyebrow to convey his meaning without putting it into so many words. Her fiancée is asleep in the other room, he assumes, and the last thing he needs is someone else knowing what's going on in their family.

She shakes her head, clearly not believing him and for a second he thinks she's going to burst into a tirade he knows all too well she's capable of, but he interrupts her before she can.

"Sebastian told me."

"So you're still with _Sebastian _then," she sneers, and he can detect a hint of jealousy beneath her cold demeanor, a small lift to his lips as he fights off a smile.

"He's been keeping tabs on everyone for me while I'm off fighting. For you."

She turns her head away from him, but he can see the faint pink tinting her cheeks even if she refuses to acknowledge his statement.

"It's bad, Rach. We're losing. We need you out there."

"I have a life, Blaine!" she screeches as silently as she can. "I have bills and a home and a fiancée and a career! I have everything I wanted!"

"Do you?" he asks, taking a risk and stepping towards her in order to rest his hand on her hip, just under her sweatshirt and above the incredibly short shorts she's always worn to bed. "Is that why you fucked me in a bathroom of a bar three years ago?"

He can feel her tense up under his light touch as he pushes her hair behind her shoulder, grazing his lips lightly against her neck until he reaches her ear. "If you really had everything you wanted, you wouldn't still think of me, would you Rach?"

"I'm happy," she whispers, forcing the words out and he thinks that on some level, she is. That she's forced herself to think this is the life she so dearly and desperately craves until she's fooled herself into thinking she's happy, and Blaine kisses her cheek before pulling back.

"Then you can come back to this life, after we get Dean and Cas," Blaine promises, backing away from her. "I just need your help getting them."

"Why me?"

"You're a Winchester, Rach," Blaine winks, and she looks towards her bedroom door before sighing, her hands tugging on the sleeves of her hoodie.

"You'll bring me back once we're done?"

"Of course I will," Blaine responds quickly, not a second of hesitation in his voice.

"Let me just pack my bag."

_**oh let the sun beat down upon my face**__**  
**__**stars fill my dreams**__**  
**__**i am a traveler of both time & space**__**  
**__**to be where i have been**__**  
**__**to sit with elders of the gentle race**__**  
**__**this world has seldom seen**__**  
**__**they talk of days for which they sit & wait**__**  
**__**all will be revealed**_

She leaves nothing behind but a note on the kitchen table and her engagement ring on top of it, her bag thrown into the back seat as he manages to navigate through mid-morning traffic.

"I'm not coming back, am I?" she asks quietly, leaning her head against the window and gazing at the city she's come to love more than anything else, even more than him.

"No," Blaine admits quietly. He has no intention of letting her go, not this time. If she wanted to run, he was going to fight for her just like she wanted him to all those years ago when he should.

"We don't know how long it'll take to find our dads, after all," he uses as an excuse but her responding gaze tells him that she knows it goes beyond that.

"I've missed you," she says quietly, letting her fingers ghost over the back of his hand as it rests on the gear shift, and for a minute he has to fight off a shiver at the feeling of her soft skin against his own as if they're 16 again, a smile toying at his lips.

"I love you," he responds. "Forever."

And even if 'forever' implies driving across the country in the Camaro with Sebastian popping in while they try and save the world, their family and each other, Blaine's never meant a single word more.

_**carry on my wayward son  
there'll be peace when you are done  
lay your weary head to rest  
don't you cry no more**_


	5. Authors NoteSong Credits

Lyrics used in Stars Start Falling:

**Title: **Sunshine of Your Love (Cream)

Us & Them (Pink Floyd)

All My Love (Led Zeppelin)

You Can't Always Get What You Want (Rolling Stones)

Renegade (Styx)

Hey Jude (The Beatles)

Feels Like The First Time (Foreigner)

Burning For You (Blue Oyster Cult)

Feel Like Making Love (Bad Company)

Right Now (Van Halen)

The Chain (Fleetwood Mac)

Born to Run (Bruce Springsteen)

Riders On The Storm (The Doors)

Hello, It's Me (Todd Rundgren)

Can't You See (Marshall Tucker Band)

Someone Saved My Life Tonight (Elton John)

Layla (Eric Clapton)

Live And Let Die (Paul McCartney)

Stuck In The Middle With You (Stealers Wheel)

Sail Away Sweet Sister (Queen)

Gold Dust Woman (Fleetwood Mac)

Come Sail Away (Styx)

Fall From Grace (Fleetwood Mac)

Kashmir (Led Zeppelin)

Carry On My Wayward Son (Kansas)

**Authors Note: **

First, and foremost, I owe the biggest thank you in the entire world to Kira, because without her this fic would not exist. She listened to me bitch and whine more than anyone else and helped come up with plot points when I was stuck and let me yell at her when I re-read it to edit it and basically, I owe her a lifetime of gratitude for putting up with me and helping me through this. She is the only reason I wrote this some days, and she was the single biggest help.

I also want to thank every other person who helped me write this-even just by saying how excited they were for it. And for those who want to _make _things for it-this was originally intended to be posted with the Blaine Big Bang, but as my artist never contacted me and I was finished, I decided screw it. I can post as I please~

And to anyone from the Supernatural fandom who may discover this-I apologize, because this is nowhere near as wonderful as anything that comes from there.

xoxo


End file.
